I look up at him now.

“To learn how to take care of people. I take care of her. She doesn’t need money, she has more than enough. She doesn’t need a best friend. She has those, too, I’m sure. But she calls me, Sydney. When she has something to talk about. I’m the guy she tells her problems to. I’m the guy she calls when she needs advice. So yeah. I kill people. But I am so much more than a killer. It’s complicated. I get that. But what I do is not complicated. What I do is simple. I survive and I make sure everyone I care for survives too.”

“Do you care for me?”

He puts his fingertips to my lips. “Not tonight. We’re not gonna have that conversation tonight.”

“I think I need to go.”

“Tomorrow, Sydney. After I show you what I did today, tomorrow you can go. But right now we’re gonna go upstairs, take a shower, and go to bed.”

I take a moment. And in truth I need so much more than a moment to gather all this shit up in my head and make sense of it. But I don’t have more time. And I don’t have any answers, either. I have nothing.

Nothing but this man.

So that’s what we do.

He leads me by the hand again. We retrace our steps up to the second floor and take a shower together in the master bath. He shampoos my hair and talks about his life. His first hit was a gangster in Boston when he was seventeen. He tells me how he had an appointment with MIT the next weekend and met his best friend. He talks about lots of other jobs too. Girls even. The two girls Garrett killed. Case explains that he dated them, had regrets for getting them involved in his life and set them up in Mexico to try and forget about what that might mean. The fact that Garrett killed them bothers him, but not much. He talks and talks and talks. Most of the stuff is nothing I want to know. But he tells me anyway.

He is a killer.

But then he dresses me in a white t-shirt that smells like him, and a pair of boxers that are way too big, and tucks me into his bed.

His arms wrap around me. His body heat gets tangled up in my own. He kisses me on the lips and says goodnight.

He is a killer.

But he is this man too.

“How?” I ask, when we are settled into bed. “How can life be so complicated and easy at the same time?”

“It’s a joke, Sydney. And the joke’s on us. Sanity, morals, right and wrong. They are all illusions. And sometimes we can see them clearly, and sometimes we can’t. But you always know when you’re OK. You always get that feeling that nothing can touch you. And tonight nothing can touch you. So close your eyes and let it go.”

I stare up at the ceiling after his breathing evens out and wonder if I’d be doing the world a favor by grabbing a gun out of his nightstand and shooting him in the head.

Probably. That’s the conclusion I come to. I have no idea what all that means. I have no idea if I believe him or not. I have no idea if he’s wondering right now if he should just pull a gun out of his nightstand and do the world a favor by killing me too.

I’m just glad he doesn’t. I’m OK with this. Because even though he is that killer, he is this man too. The one who feeds me and fucks me softly. The one who knows who I am and what I do. And he, of all the people who have floated in and out of my life, is the one who’s here.

You can say many things about Merric Case, but you can’t call him a hypocrite or a liar. Because he was one hundred percent honest with me tonight. He basically stood up on a mountain top and screamed, Here I am, take it or leave it.

I decide I don’t want to leave it.

He’s morally questionable. He’s violent and possibly even sick. But I am all those things too.

My eyes grow heavy and finally close. And I drift off knowing that I was right about him for all these years.

He is the man who shows up when no others will. He is the man who looks death in the eye and laughs. He is the man who will pull that trigger when the whole world stands there in shock, unable to move.

He is the only man who can save me from myself.

“When your whole world is made up of lies it’s OK to be irrational. But when the time comes, you must be prepared to let it go.”

– Sydney

I wake up first and go downstairs. I look out the floor-to-ceiling windows and wonder how two fucked-up people can be immersed in such beauty. The mountains, the snow, the frozen river running through this perfect valley.

And I come to the conclusion we are wild. And that’s why we belong here.

He comes down a few minutes later with the first-aid kit in his hand. The smell of coffee brewing permeates the house and calls out like a morning wake-up.

“Morning,” he says, reaching for a cup in the cupboard. He pours a cup, takes it black—the way a man like him should—and kisses me absently on the head as he walks by.

I almost drop my own coffee cup.

“We can eat later or now.”

“Are we in a hurry?” I ask, composing myself before he takes a seat at the bar and gives me his full attention.

“I don’t think so. You’ve been here for weeks and no one came looking.”

God, that stings.

“But I gotta get on the trail and I need you to come.”

“OK,” I say, finishing my coffee and walking over to the sink.

“Come sit so I can take a look at your hand before we go.”

I do as he asks, letting him unwrap the bandages and look the blisters over. He dabs the ointment on the blisters that have popped, and then wraps it back up. “You need some pain pills for this?”

“No, thank you. The last thing I need is more drugs.”

He gives me a strained smile and then another absent-minded kiss on the head, his hand lingering in my hair just long enough to make me feel… loved.

And how crazy is that? How, after one perfect day, can things have turned so completely around?

Because you’re needy, Syd. You want affection, and even the affection of this killer who did all those terrible things to you is better than none.

Stockholm syndrome comes to mind again. How did I get here? The music, the soft fuck, caring for my hand… I add it all up in my head.

Things look so different in the light of day. I guess that’s why I prefer the dark.

We dress in our snow gear and then I follow him out to the garage. He backs the snow machine out and points to the seat in front of him as I watch. “Let’s go.”

He’s businesslike today. Like he’s on a job and not like he wants to make love to me. But that would be normal, right?

He’s gonna take you out into the woods and kill you, Syd.

He could do that. But why? I’m here. No one lives anywhere near this house. He could kill me in the driveway and leave my body there until spring. Let the wolves eat me. No one would come looking. No one would ever know.

I get on and his chest presses up against my back. We ride along for a while. The recent snow has covered up all tracks from the last time we were out here. It’s just a blanket of white so blinding I wish I had his sunglasses.

When we finally stop, I’m ready to panic. He’s been silent the whole time. And I realize that a snow machine and conversation do not go together, but some sort of communication would make me feel a whole lot better about letting him get me into such a vulnerable spot. How appropriate would it be for him to talk me up with all that shit last night, only to dump me into the wilderness to be hunted by wolves? Or freeze to death?

He cuts the engine and we sit in the silence for a moment. “Ready?”

I have to swallow hard. “Should I be?”

He swings his leg over and then reaches for me, pulling me off the seat. “Depends, Syd.”