Mia POV
I set the gun on the counter.
I step back from it like it might move on its own. My heart is doing something complicated and loud inside my chest and I need a second just one second to be a normal person standing in her normal kitchen having a completely abnormal morning.
He is watching me from the couch. Still calm. Still with that unreadable expression that gives absolutely nothing away. Like a man who has been in worse situations than girl finds gun and found them mildly inconvenient.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"Luca."
"Luca what?"
A pause. "Just Luca. For now."
Just Luca. For now. Like a last name is something he'll hand out when he decides I've earned it. Like this is a job interview and he is the one conducting it from my couch with two bullet holes in him.
I look at the gun. I look at him. I look at the gun again.
"I'm going to call the police," I say.
"Okay."
That stops me. I expected I don't know what I expected. An argument. A threat. Something that matched the tattoo and the weapon and the general energy of dangerous man in dangerous situation. Not okay delivered in the same tone you'd use to agree on a lunch order.
"You're not going to try to stop me?" I ask.
His eyes hold mine. "Would it work?"
I pick up my phone.
I stand there with it in my hand.
I look at him really look at him. The bandages I put on him. The fever still sitting in the color of his skin. The way he is lying completely still because moving hurts and he is too proud to show how much. He is not threatening me. He has not asked me for anything except water. He told me how to hold the gun safely when I could have dropped it and shot us both.
Who does that? Who does that?
I set the phone down.
Pick it up again.
"I should call them," I say, more to myself than to him. "This is insane. You are a stranger with a gun and I don't even know your last name and you were shot someone shot you and the correct thing, the smart thing, the thing every single brain cell I have is screaming at me to do right now is to call for help and let someone else handle this."
He says nothing. Just watches me with those dark eyes.
"I'm calling," I say.
I dial nine.
I dial one.
My thumb sits over the last number.
That's when he makes the sound.
Not words not in English, anyway. A sharp, tight noise that comes from somewhere deep, followed by something in Italian that I don't understand but don't need to. Pain sounds the same in every language. So does fear. And whatever he is saying, in that rough broken voice, it is not the voice of a dangerous man.
It is the voice of someone having a nightmare.
He is not awake. His head has turned slightly, jaw tight, one hand gripping the edge of the couch cushion like it's the only solid thing in a world that's moving. His face that careful, controlled, gives-nothing-away face is completely unguarded for the first time since I found him.
He looks young. That's the thing that gets me. Under all of it, he just looks like someone who is exhausted and hurt and somewhere terrible inside his own head.
I end the call before it connects.
I don't examine that decision. I cannot afford to examine that decision.
I cross to the counter. I pick up the gun. I go to my kitchen cabinet the high one above the refrigerator where I keep the flour I never use and the birthday candles from three years ago and I put the gun behind the flour and close the cabinet door.
Then I go back to check his temperature.
He settles after a few minutes. Whatever the nightmare was, it loosens its grip slowly his hand releases the cushion, his breathing evens, the lines in his face smooth back into that careful stillness. I press the back of my hand to his forehead. Still warm. Better than an hour ago. Not good enough.
I change the damp cloth. I check the bandages. I do the small, practical things because they are the only things I have and they keep my hands busy so my brain can't spiral.
Halfway through, his hand comes up not grabbing, not threatening, just a light press against my wrist. Barely conscious. Like a reflex.
Like he just needed to know someone was there.
I go very still.
His eyes don't open. His hand drops after a second. He has no idea he did it.
But I feel it for a long time after.
I eat breakfast standing at the counter because sitting feels like it requires more calm than I currently have. Toast. Coffee number two. I draft a mental list of reasons this situation is temporary and manageable and not the beginning of something I can't control.
The list is not very convincing.
By nine a.m. he is in a deeper, quieter sleep. His fever is still coming down. His color is slightly better. I have done everything I can do with what I have, and now there is nothing left but waiting which has always been the hardest part of anything for me.
I clean up. I wipe down the counter. I think about my shift tonight and how I am absolutely going to that shift because I cannot afford not to, and I think about what I'm going to do with him while I'm gone, and I think about the tattoo, and the gun behind the flour, and the word okay and the hand on my wrist, and I think
Three knocks on my door.
Hard. Deliberate.
I freeze in the middle of my kitchen.
The knocks come from people who know exactly how hard to knock. Not a neighbor. Not the super. Something about the sound is too certain. Too purposeful.
I look at the man on my couch. He doesn't stir.
I go to the door. Slowly. I press my eye to the peephole.
The hallway is empty.
Nothing. Nobody. Just the dim overhead light and the ugly carpet that has been there since before I moved in.
I let out a breath.
Then I look down.
The gap under my door. The thin strip of hallway floor I can see from here.
Muddy footprints. Two of them. Right outside my door.
Someone was standing here. Someone who came without a sound and left the same way. Someone who knocked and then didn't wait because they didn't need an answer.
They just needed to know if anyone was home.
My hand goes to the deadbolt.
Already locked. I locked it an hour ago.
But the footprints are fresh.
Which means they were here after I locked it.
Which means they were close enough to hear me moving inside.