Even at a time when his mind was still in splinters, Adam's knee-jerk instinct was to hold himself up as best he could without bringing the woman down with him. Manners. Who would have thought he could still have those? Ashes of humanity, he supposed, left after the fire. Adam turned his head to look at her as she helped to steady him. Could she read the truth in his face? Was he carrying his torture on him like a stench?

"Hell," he supplied for her, as if to say where else? A simple answer for a laughably complicated question.

But he was compliant when she started to move, following in step with her, trying his best not to lose his balance completely while she was still attached to him. The kitchen door might as well have opened up onto a tropical island for all the sense it made to Adam. For as long as he'd been in the pit, domesticity had lost all its familiarity.