Chapter 6 · Twelve Hours

"Strip. Take the shower."

He didn't look up from the winch when he said it. Flat. Bored. Like he was reading me a parts number.

I stayed where I was, coat buttoned to the throat, salt dried stiff in my hair. Under the floorboards the harbor slapped the pilings. Overhead the tin roof ticked. Four feet of warped pine between us, and every stupid decision I'd made since I walked out of my father's house piled on my side of it.

"You first," I said.

That got me half a smile. The kind a man gives a dog growling over an empty bowl.

"Water runs cold two minutes, then the boiler catches," he said. "Miss the window, you're standing in ice."

"I know how pipes work."

"Then why are you still dressed."

He turned his back before I could answer. Not manners. He did it like a man opening a door on purpose, to show me he wouldn't care if I bolted through it. Then he picked up a rag and went at the winch handle. Rust came off in orange flakes.

I stripped. Coat, sweater, jeans, stacked on an overturned crate.