Chapter 17: The Locked Door

I locked the door at nine, and I did it with my own hand.

The key turned in the old lock with a heavy click.

I stood with my forehead against the wood and listened to Darius on the other side.

He did not knock.

"You said nobody locks anybody in," his voice said, very quiet, through the oak.

"I know what I said."

"Are you afraid?"

"Yes."

"Of me?"

"No." I turned and put my back to the door. "Of how much I want you to be the one who fixes it."

For a while he said nothing.

Eli's menu map of the freight dock lay on the table behind me, and all evening I had sat between the two of them and felt myself being carried.

Carried was a good feeling, and it was exactly the feeling Silas wanted me to have.

Every kind thing Darius had done, I had taken, one after the other, from a man who could shut a door on me.

And I had said yes to him on the stones last night, and I had meant it.

I thought I had.

I needed to know, tonight, that I had.

"I need one night with a door between us," I said. "Just one. To know that I'd still come to you."

"Then I'll be here."

"You should sleep."

"I won't."

"Go to your room, Darius."

"No."

It was the first time he had said that word to me in the whole week.

I put my palm flat on the wood.

"I'll be in the corridor," he said. "I won't knock. You don't need to open it. But I won't be anywhere you have to go looking."

I heard him slide down the wall to the floor.

Then I heard nothing.

I lay on the bed in my clothes, with the light on, and I listened to him not make a sound.

At midnight I got up and walked to the window.

At one I lay down again.

At two I put my ear to the door, and I heard him breathing, slow and even, and the creak of his back against the panel.

He was awake.

He was sitting up on the stone floor with his wounded back against the oak, and he was keeping his promise.

I thought about the van.

I thought about the cloth and the dark, and the man with his hands in his pockets, nails in his palms.