Half Were Mine novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Awake, On a Good Day

On the thirtieth morning I woke before the sun, alone in the flat over the east office, and lay still.

Nothing was wrong.

I checked anyway, the way I had learned to.

My ankle was healed. My eye had stopped being any color at all.

Rhett was beyond the boundary stones, and he could not come back.

My parents had gone home to Brindle Ridge two days before, with my mother crying in the truck and my father pretending not to.

I thought about the man waiting at my door.

I wanted him. I was not afraid, and I did not owe him, and no one was pulling me.

It was a good day, and I was awake.

I got up and dressed and opened the door.

Torsten stood on the landing in his running clothes, with his hands loose at his sides.

He had been there since before dawn. I could tell by the frost on his shoulders.

"Good morning," I said.

"Good morning."

"Run with me."

He didn't ask what I had decided. He only nodded.

We climbed the ridge in the grey light and did not shift, because I wanted to walk it.

At the rock where the ridge juts out over the valley, I stopped.

The sun was coming up behind the far mountains, and the whole valley was gold.

"Thirty mornings," I said.

"Thirty."

"I woke up on every one of them and knew it was me deciding. Even the bad days. Even the day Rhett was judged."

I turned and faced him.

"I'm not asking for the pull. I know what it is. I could feel it in the hall the first morning, and I've felt it since, and it's not why."

"Then why?" he said quietly.

"You asked me what I wanted, every day for a month, and you took the answer."

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