I turn off the faucet and lower the volume on Aretha, trying to listen again, though my pounding heart is making it difficult.
A click, coming from the side door. Someone trying to turn the locked knob. There was no knock. No bell rung. Whoever it is must not think I’m here.
Or doesn’t think I’ll let him in.
The more I tell myself It can’t be Sebastian, the more I become sure that it is. Sebastian grew up pheasant hunting with his father and uncle in the English countryside. His eyesight and reflexes are excellent, and his patience as he observes his prey is unshakable. He knows how to track a moving target from a great distance. How long he can let the pheasants think they’re escaping by flying straight ahead to the next tree, the next county, across the ocean, never looking behind them as a measure of strength, not realizing it could be their fatal flaw, before he pulls the trigger. Those poor birds.
I move back from the sink and the window above it, hunching down into the shadows of the kitchen, trying to control my breathing. My possibilities for fighting seem dim. All the sharp knives are in their wood block on the counter, in perfect view of the window. Jamie didn’t keep any bug spray under the sink that could double as Mace. And I left my cell phone upstairs, helpfully.
The knob rotates again as he pushes against the door. With the new deadbolt, at least I know he won’t be able to kick it down easily, a little extra protection thanks to Ryder, not that I can say thank you without having to tell him Sebastian exists—a fact I’m not ready to share. But now I wonder if Sebastian knows about Ryder, if he saw me leave with him this weekend, hiding outside somewhere I hadn’t even thought to think about after he placed the flowers on the step where he now stands. Why, why, why would I ever have assumed Sebastian would trust anyone as uninvested as a delivery person with such a task? He has always believed if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
And he’s not wrong, especially if you’re defending yourself, your house, your life. You have no choice but to do it right.
I crawl to a low cabinet to arm myself with the heaviest pot I can swing. Even though the other doors are locked and help is just a staircase away to my cell phone, I want to prepare for the worst. In case those stairs end up being the only distance between him and me.
The clicking stops, and I pause, not knowing whether the silence means he’s gone—or just gone to another door.
The kitchen is adjacent to the dining room, which overlooks the back patio through French doors covered with diaphanous curtains. Lovely for letting in daylight. Perfect for seeing shadows at nighttime.
Hunched on the kitchen floor and holding the pot, I peek around the archway between the two rooms. A tall figure stands at the patio doors, which, though locked, are almost entirely glass, beautiful and vulnerable. Adrenaline courses through me.
I scurry into the darkness of the dining room and position myself next to the door hinges, standing to my full height, gripping the pot like a baseball bat. The knob turns and clicks, turns and clicks, and I breathe in deeply, reflexes ready, eyes wide.
The door pushes open. He steps into the dining room, and I swing the pot at his head like I’m hitting the game-winning homerun, the metal making a dull, pounding noise as it collides with his suddenly-raised forearms.
“Jesus Christ,” he yells. Except the accent isn’t British. It’s southern American. And a voice I’ve known his whole life.
“Jamie?” I say.
“Cassie, what the fuck?” He holds his arms folded in front of his face. “You barely missed my fucking nose.”
“I thought you were someone else.” I lower the pot and flip on the overhead light. He wears jeans and an old yellow t-shirt that says “Do the Dew” under a black hoodie. His hair is long and floppy, his face unshaven. In some weird way it’s almost comforting that Jamie hasn’t changed since last I saw him two years ago. For better or for worse. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” he says. He shakes out his arms, rubs his elbows. “God, good thing I’ve got jungle cat reflexes or I’d be really pissed at you right now.”
“You’d be pissed at me?” I say, my even and measured tone holding in my total disbelief. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought someone was breaking into the house.”
“Yeah, did you change the side door lock?” he says, walking through the dining room and into the kitchen. “My key wouldn’t work.”
“When the door got kicked in,” I say, following him, “I took it as an opportunity to upgrade security.”
“Someone kicked in the door?” he says, opening the refrigerator, the door’s suction loud, the light bright in the dark kitchen. He scans the shelves.
“Looking for you and ten thousand dollars,” I say.
He grabs a yogurt and lets the refrigerator close, turns his back to me as he opens the utensil drawer. “I’ll pay you back for the door,” he says.