He Caged Me for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Her Own Door
Maeve's POV
Six weeks after I left, I rode back up Route 9 on a bike I had bought myself.
It was a secondhand Sportster with a dent in the tank.
I paid for it with the first month of wages from the garage where Roxie's uncle had given me a job sweeping floors, and with what the Wolves paid me for the wolf.
They had insisted on that.
I hadn't wanted it, and then I'd taken it.
The sun was going down behind the quarry when I came to the gate.
The wire was gone.
In its place stood two new posts and nothing between them.
I stopped the bike in the open gap and cut the engine.
Fergus sat on the porch with a blanket over his knees and no cigarette.
He watched me come up the gravel, and he said nothing.
I said nothing back.
He was a small, gray man in a chair, and he did not matter.
The barn door was open.
Niall stood at the workbench with a wrench, in a plain T-shirt.
There was no patch on the vest hung behind him, only a pale rectangle of leather where it had been.
He turned.
He stood absolutely still with the wrench in his hand.
"You've got a bike," he said.
"I got a bike."
"You rode up here."
"I rode up here."
"The gate's open."
"I noticed."
He put the wrench down very carefully.
"Are you here to ask me something?" he said.
"I'm here to tell you something."
"Tell me."
"I'm not here for fifteen years."
"I know."
"I'm here for tonight. And then I decide about tomorrow."
His throat moved.
"That's a fair deal."
"I buried it," I said.
"The rag."
"Roxie and I took it down to the river. We dug a hole under the willow, and we put it in, and I said a few words. Not for him. For me, when I was sixteen and stupid and thought that wolf was the only thing I had."
"And now?"
"Now I'm going to get a new one. Later. Of my own choosing."
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