Page 13 of Steel and Ice

BLAIR

Heat ticked twice in the radiator before it settled, as if the house had decided to listen with me.

I paced my way back and forth down the front hall because standing motionless made my skin feel too tight.

The wallpaper wore old water stains as if someone had removed paintings and left ghosts in their place, and the worn-down runner in the hallway tried to hush my footsteps but failed because the wood floors refused to stop creaking.

My mind raced with flashes of the graveyard scene as it replayed in my head. Travis was furious with me, and I didn’t need to guess about what. He blamed me for the initial safety hold on his file and all of his subsequent problems.

What I couldn’t wrap my head around was how he’d been so cavalier with his freedom. To stalk me, to threaten me. Those were parole violations, which were tickets back to prison for a long time.

I checked the doorbell feed again.

I’d installed it earlier in the day, not wanting a repeat night of seeing an open door when I entered my kitchen. The porch sat inside my phone’s frame in a small circle of raindrops and flickering light. The cracked rail leaned toward the hedges as if it meant to confide in them a secret.

No one on the steps, nothing to see.

I told myself it meant no one was there but it didn’t explain why my breath halted.

Colt had walked me home from the cathedral. He hadn’t asked to come in.

I hadn’t invited him.

That was the story I planned to tell myself as the night crept on. The truth was a quieter thing, and I wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

I could feel him at the edges of my block the way a person knew when a storm was brewing nearby.

I checked the back door. Sometimes ritual felt like control if I forced myself hard enough to believe it.

The latch did its usual trick; it kissed the strike and pretended to hold. I guided it into the best version of closed and let it lie to me once more. The house’s walls sighed as if it appreciated the effort.

My phone buzzed and my heart skipped a beat. I rushed over to find a cheerful message from the doorbell camera company about a new product I should buy.

I put the phone down and went back to pacing. The couch still sagged and the plaster on the mantel showed the house shifted under bad weather. And bad decisions.

That’s when the knock came.

Knuckles flat on wood with the confidence of a man who believes all doors should open for him. My phone lit up and I saw a hooded shoulder and a jaw I knew too well from a parking lot.

Travis.

He leaned toward the lens as my porch light washed over him. I rushed over to the front door. My palm quickly found the chain, and I slid it into place.

“You’re on camera,” I said, steeling myself. “Why are you here?”

“Counselor,” he said.

Travis smiled as if the word tasted good in his mouth. Rain clung to his lashes, and it softened nothing.

He tapped the glass with his gold class ring. “Did you miss me?”

“Back up,” I said. “Get away from my house, now.”

Travis didn’t move. Instead, he tipped his head toward the door, as if he could inhale my living room in one deep breath.

“I’ve had lots of anger since I was banned from group,” he said. “So, I decided to take a walk. I thought you could counsel me, open the door.”

“Travis, you’re on probation,” I said, making sure my camera would catch the words. “You’re not supposed to have contact with me.”

I hoped my camera would catch a glimpse of his class ring for proof of his identity.

“Relax,” he said, spreading his hands before he let them fall. “I just came to talk.”

Boots scuffed on the sidewalk below the steps.

Not Travis’s gait. Slower, and more deliberate.

The doorbell widened its glow and took in a hood at the bottom of the stairs. I recognized shoulders I’d memorized before I ever meant to.

Colt stopped right where the camera could capture all of him. He lifted his wrists and turned his palms out so the lens would tell the same exact story his hands did.

“Step away from my door,” I said to Travis, louder this time. “No one crosses the threshold under any circumstance. Hands open.”

My eyes cut over to Colt and gave him the same rules. “No first strike.”

Colt’s fingers were loose, but he didn’t look at me.

He focused all of his attention on the thing that needed it.

Travis laughed. “Look at this,” he said, without looking away from me, “you’ve got yourself a little shadow.”

There was nothing little about Colt.

“Listen to me,” I said as my eyes locked on Travis. “Leave.”

But he leaned closer. Smoke and wet wool lingered on him. He wanted me to smell him, for the chain to feel small.

Fire burned in his eyes. “You stacked the cards against me, counselor. You and your pet.”

Colt climbed one step but then stopped. “Walk away.”

Travis turned toward him like metal that found a magnet. He took two steps toward Colt. Quickly.

Suddenly, Travis was close enough to fog Colt’s hood with his breath.

“You think you’re better than me,” Travis said.

He looked like he might snap.

“I don’t ever think about you,” Colt answered, “until you touch what doesn’t belong to you.”

Across the narrow street my neighbor’s porch lit yellow, flickered a few times, and stayed lit. A silhouette formed behind a second-floor curtain and didn’t move.

“Stop,” I said, but the house swallowed the word.

“You only swing when someone can’t answer,” Colt said, grimacing as he glared at Travis. “You’re a coward. Can you handle yourself against a man like me?”

Colt had goaded Travis, whose eyes were wide as saucers.

Colt added with a condescending scoff, “Didn’t think so.”

I felt the comment sting. Colt had designed it to land in a way Travis couldn’t ignore.

Like clockwork, Travis’s right shoulder coiled, and his elbow flared. The punch cut a tight shape through the rain as the crest of Travis’s class ring cracked against Colt’s cheek.

Metal on bone.

Colt’s head snapped to the right and his teeth clicked. He stumbled back and staggered as his heel shaved a small strip from the faded tread of my old stairs.

A thin cut opened where Travis’s ring had sliced Colt’s cheek. Blood beaded, then threaded along Colt’s jaw toward his collar.

My camera caught the entire arc without a stutter. Colt stayed in the exact same position he’d been in, shoulders down, hands open. He took a beating like a weathered post.

“Hold,” I said, for the record, loud enough my camera could hear it. “Do not hit him back. Stay in the camera’s frame.”

Colt obeyed in a way that made heat curl inside my body, low and disloyal. His palms remained open, his breath quiet. His eyes on me, then back to the lens.

Travis rocked back and finally saw what the lens saw. Sixty seconds of footage that would write his future. Back to prison, and fast.

He spat in my direction as if he needed to leave a mark that would never matter and dragged his hood forward as if he still had time to hide his face or conceal his identity.

“Keep filming,” Travis growled. “See how far it gets you.”

But he had already turned to walk away. Wet hedge brushed his coat but let him pass untouched. Colt shifted slightly as Travis moved past him.

Travis’s footsteps found the sidewalk, then the street.

Moments later, he disappeared into the night.

Across the street my neighbor’s light stayed on. The figure behind the curtains didn’t bother to pretend not to watch.

“Stay,” I said to Colt, my voice slightly smaller. “Hands open.”

He obeyed without a flicker. His palms were visible, shoulders down. Blood traced his mouth like ink that hadn’t yet dried. The longer Colt held the line I’d drawn, the more the knot in my spine loosened.

Relief hit hard. The short video clip would travel faster than any excuse Travis could provide. Probation rules were strict: no contact, no violence.

He had given me both.

Colt had taken heat so I wouldn’t have to check every shadow that crossed my porch for the next year. He’d given me safety, packaged neatly and timestamped.

A choice I’d let happen; that wasn’t lost on me.

“Come inside,” I said before my brain agreed to say it.

Colt crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. He set his back against it as if he planned to hold the whole block there. Metal hummed and the house listened.

His fingers slid under my jaw and pointed me up to lock eyes with him. “Look at me.”

I did.

Colt’s mouth caught mine. Heat, mint. The floor tilted. He didn’t taste careful or hesitant. He tasted decided.

He guided me with his hands, swapping our positions so that I was backed against the door.

The chain breathed; my silent answer did, too.

Colt pressed his weight against me and eased me into the frame.

Forearm beside my temple. No pin, no mercy.

His chest sealed to mine, his weight translating through wood.

My spine understood him before my brain ever caught up.

“Still,” I said, smaller than I’d meant to.

Colt stilled the way a storm goes calm. But it seemed temporary. As if he were paused, a loaded spring. I realized how much I wanted to feel it release.

Not obedience. Aim.

He moved again. Slower for a heartbeat but only because I’d asked. Then, not slow at all.

“Hand,” Colt said.

I immediately gave it, and he planted my palm on the jamb. He pressed it there until the door took some of me.

“Stay,” he said, voice low enough I could feel it vibrate.

We stood in the foyer with my back against the closed door.

I wondered if anyone outside could see through the glass.

Colt’s thigh slotted mine and closed the last inch between us until there was no more space.

Heat soaked through layers. His shape answered every doubt I had in exactly the wrong way.

The class ring had left a clean crescent along his cheekbone; purple climbed under it and shaded his eyes. My knuckles brushed near the mark and Colt didn’t flinch. All of his attention stayed on my face, heavy as a hand.

“Open,” Colt said.