Chapter 30: Willful Ignorance

After Yuki ran upstairs, Dean took a moment to clear their dishes and put them in the dishwasher before turning towards the stairs. He shot one solid glance at Katherine before chasing after Yuki.

“I’ll be back down to talk to you in a few minutes; I just need to clear up a few misunderstandings. Make yourself at home…”

Dean then didn’t look back as he climbed the staircase before approaching his own door. It was partially shut, and when he walked inside, Yuki was sitting on his bed with her legs crossed and a subtle pout on her lips.

He took a deep breath before sitting down next to the woman, fidgeting awkwardly with his hands as he hardly knew what to do with them.

“That was a bit uncalled for, you know that, right?”

Yuki snapped her focus on Dean; she had gone from pouting to a furrowed brow.

“You trust her too easily… You just met this woman, and you brought her into our home?”

Dean tried to calm Yuki while reaching for her hand, but she pulled it away before he could grab it, forcing him to say his thoughts outright.

“I don’t trust her Yuki, that’s the point. I brought her here to monitor her. I know you’re trying to protect me, but she-”

Yuki cut Dean off with a simple, decisive action. She stood up and walked to the door, stopping once as she stepped into its frame and looking back over her shoulder ever so slightly.

“That’s not what I meant… baka….”

She then entered her room and shut the door behind her, leaving Dean in a state of total confusion. He had no choice but to walk down the stairs in defeat, where he found Katherine already in the act of pouring herself a stiff drink after having raided his liquor cabinet.

She stared at Dean coldly sipping the glass in front of him and mistook his expression for condemnation.

“If you didn’t want me to drink your liquor, you should have secured it better….”

Dean collapsed onto the couch, leaning back into its fine leather cushion with a heavy sigh.

“Pour me one too while you’re at it.”

The woman didn’t seem to hesitate, finding a second glass and dropping three ice cubes in it, before filling it with two fingers of whiskey.

She handed the glass to Dean before sitting down across from him, resting her knees in a comfortable stance while supporting her upper body with her drinking arm’s elbow.

She took a sip and sighed heavily in relief.

“You have good taste… I wouldn’t have expected that from a self-imposed warlord who likes his women on the younger side….”

Dean shot a nasty glance over at Katherine as he took a sip. Responding to her sharp tongue with one of his own.

“You’ve got a mouth on you; has anyone ever told you that? Besides… It’s not like that. I owe her a debt of gratitude, and she’s just protective of me that’s all….”

Katherine snorted with laughter, nearly choking on her liquor as she heard Dean’s words.

“Good one… I almost believed you for a second.”

But Dean’s expression didn’t shift in the slightest; it took her a few seconds to realize it, but he meant every word he said. Especially as he buried his words with another sip of whiskey.

The question was sudden and sharp as a knife.

“You don’t have much experience with women do you?”

Dean scoffed and rolled his eyes. Having already finished his drink, he poured himself another glass, this time to its top. He murmured something beneath his breath that he thought Katherine couldn’t hear.

“Unfortunately… I have too much. That appears to be the problem.”

The only sound that existed between them was the whiskey carving its way into the ice within their cups.

Katherine carefully observed Dean’s expression. His eyes were distantly staring at the snow in the yard outside. But there was no haze within them. His focus was there, but directed towards something absent from the world around them.

But the real giveaway was the way his jaw tightened slightly after muttering beneath his breath.

Her mind instantly harkened back to the moment she first stepped onto the outskirts of Paradise Falls. There were two sets of gunshots, separated by minutes in time. Leaving six bodies laid out in the snow.

Four of them were raiders, bound, gagged, and executed coldly. But the other two lay three meters apart, separated. And they appeared like normal survivors. One man and one woman.

They were both bound, but only by their hands, and their mouths remained free to speak before their deaths. Unlike the bandits, their deaths were personal.

During her career as a surgeon, she had made impossible calls in operating rooms. Cut here or lose a limb. Clamp there or lose the patient. Decisions made in seconds that altered lives forever. But those choices were made to preserve something.

What she had witnessed in the snow was different. It wasn’t chaos; it wasn’t panic, and it was resolution.

Dean had not lost control…. He had chosen. And if he could make that choice once, he could make it again.

The realization did not frighten her as much as it should have. It clarified something instead. This house was not held together by hope or kindness. It was held together by discipline; and by a man who would burn out infection before it spread.

If she stayed, she would be living inside that calculus. And when she realized that it didn’t take long before Katherine more or less understood what had happened. It explained perfectly why Dean was almost deliberately ignoring the obvious signs of Yuki’s jealousy.

She sighed heavily and placed her cup on the table in front of Dean and her, resting her head in her hands while shaking it.

“God… I really do have the worst timing, don’t I?”

Dean had no idea what the woman was referring to, but he had his own problems to worry about. He simply drank from his glass and responded in the only way he felt he could.

“You and me both….”

The two of them didn’t say another word to one another. Drinking just enough to dull their senses before going their separate ways for the night.

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