Page 104 of Soft Flannel Hank

“Do you know him?”

Jory bit her lips between her teeth as her eyebrows came together. She nodded slowly as a tear dripped off of her chin and fell to the floor.

“Is he… Is he the man you loved?”

Jory took a deep, shuddering breath in. She handed the phone back to Esther, her fingers lingering before she released it. “Whoever this is, he’s not the man I loved.”

Jory stood slowly and turned to leave the office. Before she did, though, she looked over her shoulder at Esther. “But I won’t let him hurt you,” she said. And then she was gone.

Esther looked down at Callum’s face on her phone screen looking back at her, sitting on the desk next to the Two of Wands, and realized that nothing that she had taken for granted was as simple as she’d thought.

21

It was dark when Niamh drove past the sign that read “World’s End Welcomes You.” Hank had a pounding headache from the whiskey and a nauseating pit in his gut that had absolutely nothing to do with the whiskey and everything to do with Esther.

Worrying about Esther. Loving Esther. Wanting to lock Esther in his bedroom and throw away the key.

That one would serve two purposes. He’d get to keep here there to make sure she was safe, but he’d also get to take out all of the frantic worry that had plagued him all day on her body. If he ever got the chance, he was going to tie her down and make her come until she couldn’t think about doing such a stupid thing ever again as hurling herself into harm’s way without backup. Without him.

Nat lived in a little house on the outskirts of town. His neighbors weren’t close, which was good, because he didn’t need anyone looking into the odd yet regular schedule he kept. It was enough for most people to know he worked nights at the national park. But a close neighbor might ask more questions.

As they got closer, Hank saw Niamh become more tense in the seat next to him. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and bit her bottom lip between her teeth.

“You okay?” Hank asked.

Niamh nodded.

“You sure?”

Niamh sighed. “I’ve just never been here before.”

“Never? How long have you known Nat?”

“He’s been known to me for… a hundred and eighty years?”

Hank choked on the gas station coffee he’d been sipping. He didn’t know why that surprised him. Nat being almost four hundred years old didn’t faze him anymore, so Niamh admitting to being two hundred or more years old shouldn’t either. But it did.

The logical part of his brain that needed things to make sense always rebelled when he came upon new people like Nat or Niamh or, hell, even Magda and Esther. But the animal part of his brain, the deep, instinctive knowing parts didn’t bat an eye. He still needed to come to terms with Magda, wondering if he mom had known. Knowing deep down that she probably had. But he hadn’t had time to wrestle with that yet.

“So a hundred and eighty years, and you’ve never been to his house?”

“I wasn’t… welcome, you could say.”

“And now?” Hank couldn’t help but ask.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Niamh sniffed.

Nat lived at the end of a long driveway, and as they pulled up to the house, the automatic floodlights hanging over the garage bathed the parking pad in a bright light. Niamh put the SUV in park and pressed the button to turn it off. But she didn’t make a move to get out.

“It’ll be okay,” Hank said, not really understanding why.

He certainly couldn’t promise that. He knew that Nat would never lay a finger on Niamh, but he also knew that there was more than one way to hurt a person.

He knew that better than anyone. Hadn’t that been the story of his life for the last seventeen years? Death by a million little paper cuts, followed by some large gashes, many of them delivered in the name of kindness.

But in that moment, Hank realized that he was not the man he had been even two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, he would have wallowed in the cabin and waited for Jamie to come get him. He would have slunk around like a kicked dog because he would have believed that, deep down, he had deserved to be left behind, that Esther’s story was nothing more than a convenient excuse to be cruel in order to be kind.

Yet here he was, in a car with Niamh, sitting in Nat’s driveway, ready to follow Esther into hell whether or not she wanted him to because he couldn’t sit around and let her do it alone. He wasn’t going to be that kicked dog anymore, no matter what she decided to do. If she wanted to leave and go on the run, he’d ask to go with her. If she wanted to stay and fight, he’d protect her with his last breath.