I set it carefully on the counter.
Evidence that for one day, I wasn’t Beth Taylor.
I stare at the pen for a long time.
D.M.
And I know, with the bone-deep certainty of someone who has completely lost control of her own life, that I’m going back.
Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon.
Because Dario smiled when he read my note. Because someone in that house looked out the window, maybe hoping to see me. Because I have his pen now, and that feels like the beginning of something instead of the end.
I pick it up again. Hold it against my chest.
D.M.
I wonder if he’s noticed it’s missing yet. If he’s looking for it. If he knows I have it.
I sleep with it on my nightstand. Right next to the lamp. Right where I’ll see it every morning when I wake up.
I turn off the lamp.
In the dark, I reach out and touch the pen one more time.
Cool metal. Solid weight. Evidence that I was there. That I existed. That someone saw me.
Chapter Thirteen
STEVIE
Two days later the knock comes soft. My paranoia doesn’t. My heart bolts upright like it just heard its Miranda rights.
Part of me, the guilty, criminal part, thinks they know. Someone saw me. Someone reported me. Saul’s here to tell me I’ve been compromised and we’re moving to a cement bunker in rural Alaska, where the sun sets in January and Olive Garden is considered international cuisine.
I’ll befriend a moose and develop a love-hate relationship with canned soup and seasonal depression
But when I open the door, Saul is just... Saul.
Holding a shopping bag. Wearing the same soft blue flannel that keeps showing up like a recurring dream I’m not ready to wake from. Looking at me with that half-concerned, half-worried-I-might-bite-him expression he gets when I’m spiraling.
“Hey,” he says. “Brought you something.”
“You know you don’t have to keep bringing me things,” I say, even though every cell in my body is screaming ‘keep bringing me things forever, you emotionally competent bear of a man.’
I step back to let him in. “I’m starting to feel like a charity case. Or a very high-maintenance houseplant.”
“Houseplants don’t talk back.” He sets the bag on my couch. “You definitely talk back.”
“It’s one of my few remaining personality traits. I’m trying to preserve it.”
He pulls out a throw blanket. Bright teal with a geometric pattern. As in: jewel tone. As in: this man walked into a store, saw color, and thoughtStevie should have this.
“Thought your couch could use some color,” he says, voice doing that thing where it pretends he’s not nervous about overstepping.
I stare at the blanket. At the teal that practically vibrates against the beige backdrop of my sad little apartment.
“Saul...”
