“If he hadn’t found me, I would’ve kept running and running until they murdered me. There is no doubt in my mind. He supported me, he took care of me when there was no one else to do it. When you weren’t around.”

Ethan turned back onto his side and faced his wife, their noses touching, her breath in his face and a roiling mass of emotion inside of him that he wasn’t completely certain he could keep tied down.

“Do you want to be with him?” he asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Does that mean maybe?”

“I have never been loved the way that man loves me.” Ethan stopped breathing. “If this is hard for you to hear, I’m sorry, but I was his world, Ethan, and it . . .” She let the words go, let them trail off into nothing.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t say any—”

“No, finish your thought.”

“It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Since the first time you and I met, I have loved you with everything I have. Can I just be straight up with you? I have always loved you more than you loved me.”

“That is not true.”

“You know it is. My loyalty, my devotion to you has been total. If our marriage was a rope, you on one end, me on the other, I was always pulling a little bit harder. And sometimes a lot.”

“This is punishment, isn’t it? For Kate.”

“Not everything is about you. This is about me and this man I fell in love with while you were gone, and who’s now back, and I have no fucking idea how to handle it. Can you put yourself in my shoes for two seconds?”

Ethan sat up in bed, threw back the covers.

“Don’t leave,” she said.

“I just need some air.”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, you should’ve told me on day one.”

He climbed out of bed, walked out of their room wearing socks, pajama bottoms, and a wifebeater.

It was two or three in the morning, and Level 4 stood empty, the fluorescent lights humming quietly overhead.

Ethan walked down the corridor. Behind every door he passed, residents of Wayward Pines slept safe and sound. There was comfort in knowing that some had been saved.

The cafeteria was closed, dark.

Stopping at the doors to the gymnasium, he peered through the glass. In the low light, he saw the raised basketball hoops, the court covered in cots. The people in the mountain had volunteered as a group to give up their rooms on Level 4 to the refugees, a gesture he hoped would be a good omen for the tough transition to come.

Down on Level 2, he swiped his card and stepped into surveillance.

Alan sat at the console, watching the screens.

He looked back as Ethan entered, and said, “You’re up late.”

Ethan took a seat beside him.