Credence

I pop my eyes open. Jake.

I sniffle, drying my eyes as I sit up but avoid his gaze as he looms at the door. Kaleb rises and backs away from me.

What the hell is Jake doing back already? What do I tell him?

But he doesn’t seem to notice that Kaleb and I were embracing.

He rushes over. “Jesus Christ…” He takes my arm, gently lifting it up to inspect the bandage and then diving down to swipe the bloody one off the floor.

“It’s okay,” I assure him.

He shoots Kaleb a glare anyway. “I leave you alone for one night!”

Kaleb returns the look, and my stomach immediately sinks. God, they look alike when they’re angry.

But then Kaleb quirks a smile, and I’m not sure why, but it pisses Jake off more, and he jerks his head, ordering his son out.

Kaleb leaves, not sparing me another glance.

“It’s okay,” I tell him again once Kaleb is gone. “The animals are fine. I’m fine.”

Jake slams the door and comes over, kneeling down in Kaleb’s place and unwrapping the bandage to take a look. His cheeks and nose are wind-burnt, and the scruff on his jaw is a little darker than the hair on his head.

“A fire started in the middle of the night,” I tell him. “Thank goodness we woke up. We were able to extinguish it, but I got roughed up when I tried to get Shawnee out of the barn. It wasn’t the boys’ fault.”

He tosses the bandage and inspects the stitches. “Jesus Christ,” he bites out. “Goddamn them.”

“They didn’t do this,” I say. “They took care of it, though.”

He shakes his head, continuing to look at the wound. Rising up, he grabs a washcloth off the shelf and wets it, while also taking the petroleum jelly out of the medicine cabinet.

I look up at him, worry coiling its way through my stomach. “You’re back early.”

If he’d showed up ten minutes ago, he would’ve found me in Kaleb’s bed.

If he’d come back last night, he…

It’s not something I planned on hiding from him, but I don’t want him thinking we reveled in his absence either or that this was planned.

“I got turned around,” he tells me, setting the items down and spilling a couple ibuprofen into his palm and handing them to me. “The snow was just too deep and the wind too strong. I wasn’t going to make it another night out there.”

He comes down, dropping to one knee, and cleans around the stitches, adding some petroleum jelly as I swallow the pills.

I stare at him, his lips a foot away as he dresses my wound. “Something else happened last night,” I whisper.

He slows for a moment but then continues, not looking at me.

“After the fire…” I go on. “With the boys.”

I don’t blink and neither does he as he avoids my gaze. My stomach churns.

“I…”

“Both of them?” he asks, looking down to pick up some gauze he dropped on the floor.

“I…um…”

I can’t say it, though, and he doesn’t make me.