Chapter 129: The Unfolding Truth IX

Third Person POV

The sun had been warm since early morning. Helen had been outside since it arrived, kneeling in the dirt beside the cottage with a small pouch of seeds open next to her knee.

The ground was soft from the recent rain, easy to work, giving way without much resistance. She pushed a hole with her finger, dropped a seed in, and covered it. Then another. Then another.

Sonita had been living with her for two weeks and the cottage had reorganized itself around that fact without being asked. The extra sleeping mat came out every night and went away every morning.

The extra cup was always out on the shelf. The fire was always a little larger than Helen kept it when she was alone because Sonita ran cold and never admitted it.

Helen pressed another seed into the dirt and smiled at the ground.

She thought about Kai.

About the first time he came back after the rain. The second time. The third. She had counted at first and then stopped counting somewhere around the fourth because counting implied she was tracking and tracking implied she was waiting and she had not decided yet whether she was waiting.

But she watched the forest edge when she was outside.

She was aware of that.

The first time he came back, Sonita had been in the doorway with her arms crossed before he reached the fence. Helen had watched from behind her and said nothing.

"How did you find this place?" Sonita had said. Sharp. No greeting.

"I have been here before," Kai said.

"I know that. But how did you find it? I brought you here."

He looked at her steadily. "When I was leaving the last time I followed a different way out. To see if there was a shortcut."

Sonita’s jaw had gone tight in that way it went tight when she realized something had happened that she had not planned for.

Helen had looked at her hands so Sonita would not see the smile.

She had taken the long way through the woods that night in the rain. The route she used when she did not want someone to be able to find their way back. It worked on most people. It worked on people who were not paying the kind of attention Kai paid to everything.

He had found the shortcut anyway.

****

Helen came back to the present.

The sun was still warm. The dirt was still under her fingers. She reached for the next seed.

That was when she heard it.

Just a shift in the air. The soft displacement that happened when something moved through the grass quietly and carefully. Small sound. Easy to miss.

She did not miss it.

Her hands stayed in the dirt. Her body stayed loose. Nothing about her changed on the outside. On the inside she was already assessing, already aware, already knowing exactly where the sound had come from and how close it was.

She was not someone who liked conflict. She had spent most of her life being the girl who stayed small and stayed quiet and made herself easy to overlook. But quiet was not the same as defenseless. She knew how to protect herself. Fast. Clean. Without leaving anything behind that needed explaining.

The sound came again. Closer.

She moved.

Her hand found the small knife she kept in the dirt beside her, the one with the wooden handle she kept sharp out of habit. She came up off her knees and turned in one motion, the blade already moving through the air toward whatever was behind her.

A hand caught her wrist.

The knife stopped an inch from his chest.

Kai stood there looking down at her. His green eyes calm. His grip around her wrist was firm but not tight. He was not even breathing differently.

"Impressive," he said.

Helen stared at him. Her heart was going fast. "Kai." She pulled her wrist back and he let it go immediately. "What are you thinking? I almost hurt you."

A small smile. "I wanted to see if I could surprise you."

"You thought sneaking up on someone who lives alone in the woods was a good idea?" She put the knife down and wiped her hands on her pants. "How many times are you going to do this in one week?"

He scratched the back of his neck. She had noticed he did that when he was working out what to say next and had not finished working it out yet. Then he brought his hands out from behind his back.

A kitten.

Small and grey, its fur sticking up in several directions at once like it had strong opinions about gravity. Its eyes were half-closed against the sunlight, slow and unbothered. It sat in his palm like it had been placed there by someone who had thought carefully about where things should go.

Helen’s breath caught before she had finished processing what she was looking at.

"Where did you get it?" she said. Her voice had gone soft without her deciding to make it soft.

"I bought it for you."

She looked at him. Then at the kitten. Then at him again. "You bought it."

"Yes."

She reached out and took it. It was warm and small and it squirmed once and then settled into her hands with the complete confidence of something that had decided where it wanted to be. She brought it up toward her face.

She did not realize she was making sounds until she heard herself making them.

"Oh, you are so cute," she said. The voice that came out was not the voice she used for other people. Higher and softer, the kind that arrived without permission when faced with something small and warm that looked at you with half-closed eyes. "Yes, you are. Look at your little face. Oouu. Look at you."

The kitten blinked at her.

She kept going. Several more sounds that belonged to no language she had been taught. The kitten appeared to have no objection to any of them.

Then she looked up.

Kai was watching her. His lips were pressed together with the focused effort of someone trying not to let a smile become what it was trying to become. He was not fully succeeding.

The heat arrived in her face all at once. Her cheeks. Her ears. The back of her neck. She could feel all of it happening and could not do anything about any of it.

She cleared her throat.

"Thank you, Kai." Normal voice. Fully back to normal. "I really appreciate this. This is one of the best gifts I have ever received."

"Anything for you," he said. Still with that not-quite-contained smile.

Helen looked at him. The kitten moved in her hands. "Why though?" she said. "You keep coming back. You brought a gift. You are overdoing it. Why?"

He scratched the back of his neck again. He looked at the ground. Then at her. Then at the kitten. Then back at her.

"I." He stopped. Started again. "I kind of." Another stop. He ran one hand through his hair. "I like you."

He said it and then stood with it, looking slightly like someone who had jumped off something and was now in the part of the jump after the deciding.

"Like." He said it again quieter. "Like you."

Helen stared at him.

"That was very direct," she said. "You did not even try to work up to it."

"When I am comfortable with someone." He was looking at her steadily now, the stumbling part finished. "Or when I want to get closer. Which I have not really done before. So this is new for me. I just." A small shrug. "When I feel something, I stay near it. I do not know another way."

Helen’s face was still warm. The kitten mewed quietly in her hands. She looked at it for a moment and then back at him.

"How sure are you?" she said. "That it is not just some passing thing. That it is actually something real."

He looked at her. No hesitation this time. No scratching the back of his neck.

"I am old enough to know my feelings, Helen," he said. "And what I feel for you is real."

The silence that followed was not uncomfortable.

It was the kind of silence that had something in it, weight and warmth in equal measure, the kind that two people stood in when something true had been said and neither of them was ready to move past it yet.

Helen looked at his green eyes. He looked at hers.

The kitten had opinions about the silence and expressed them.

Just then a bucket hit the ground.

Loud and sudden, the water sloshes over the sides and darkening the dirt around it. Both of them turned.

Sonita stood a few feet away with her hands empty and her face doing the thing it did when she had decided something and was already several steps into acting on it. She looked at Kai. Then at Helen. Then at Kai again.

"What is he doing here... again?" she asked. Flat.

Kai looked at her. He did not appear rattled.

"You are here all the time," Sonita continued, not waiting for an answer. "Every time I turn around. Do you not have somewhere to be? Something to do? You are old enough to have responsibilities."

"I have told you before," Kai said, still completely level. "You will not get between us. I hope you still remember that."

Sonita looked at Helen.

"What is going on here?" she said. "What did I walk into?"

Helen held out the kitten. "Look," she said. "Isn’t it the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?"

Sonita looked at the kitten. Then at Kai. Then at Helen, with the specific expression she reserved for situations she considered preventable.

"He is really going out of his way," she said. "And you are letting him."

"He brought me a pet," Helen said. "What exactly is wrong with that?"

"Everything. About him keeps showing up here as if he lives here is wrong with that." Sonita’s arms crossed. "Why do you never ask him the difficult questions? Why do you just let him arrive whenever he feels like it?"

Helen exhaled. She looked at the kitten and then at the door of the cottage. "I am not in the mood to argue," she said. "I have something to take care of."

She turned and walked toward the door. The kitten was in her hands and she brought it up toward her face again as she walked, already back in the soft voice, telling it things that were not meant for anyone else to hear.

The door opened. She went inside.

Sonita and Kai stood in the yard.

The silence between them was a different kind from the one that had been between him and Helen. This one had edges.

Sonita bent down and picked up the bucket. The remaining water shifted inside it. She straightened up and walked toward the cottage and Kai took one step toward the door behind her.

She turned around.

"No," she said. Simply. Completely. "Not today. Thank you for the gift."

She stepped inside and pulled the door shut.

The latch clicked.

Kai stood outside with his hand still slightly raised, caught mid-motion, reaching for a door that was now closed. He lowered it slowly.

The sun was still warm. The birds in the trees near the fence were doing whatever birds did in the morning.

The cottage sat in front of him with its closed door and its flowers along the fence and the faint sound of Helen’s voice talking to the kitten coming through the walls.

He stood there for a moment.

Then a smile found him. Not the contained one from before. This one was quieter and more private.

He thought about red cheeks and red ears and the way she had held that kitten like it was the most important thing she had ever been given.

He thought about her eyes when he told her how he felt, the way they had gone wide and stayed wide.

She had not said it back. But she had not said no.

He turned and walked back toward the trees. His hands were in his pockets. His pace was unhurried.

He would come back tomorrow.

He always came back.