Page 89 of Before the Bond
I was at a crossroads. In a moment, I was going to decide my next destination and firmly leave the one I left behind. Leaving used to be easy.
Whatever I was leaving had already finished becoming real before I walked out of it, so the walking out was just the formal version of something that had already happened. This was how things were for so long that I started to believe I preferred it.
I left because sitting made me anxious. I went to new places hoping that it would remind me less of the trees in Northern California.
I lay back on the bed without meaning to. The ceiling’s rough, beige, popcorn texture felt like it was pressing lower and lower. A parking lot light moved across it when a car passed outside, just once, and then the room was still again.
I was tired of it.
The thought arrived quietly, without drama, and sat in the room alongside everything else. I was tired of it. I was tired of the go-bag on the shelf and the agency’s app and the exits I clocked before I unpacked. I was tired of being someone who moved so well she’d convinced herself she wasn’t running.
I wanted the fireplace. I wanted the estate in the morning, when everyone was bustling around. I wanted to take care of Jake, and see Stella. I wanted Caleb.
I repeated it in my mind.
I want Caleb…
The idea wrestled with the lingering weight in my body. I was still angry. I wanted to be clear about that, too. It was going to need somewhere to go and that conversation was going to be hard and I wasn’t pretending otherwise. But underneath it, something else had been sitting since I drove out of those gates and I’d been trying to mistake it for grief, but it wasn’t.
It was wanting to go back.
For the third time since I left, the tears welled up in my eyes. But even if that’s true, there’s no way I could go back now.
There was a loud knock on the door.
I sat up. I quickly wiped my nose and made my way toward it.
I could pull it together.
But I knew that grief was something that ebbed and flowed.
Chapter 19
Olivia
The second knock was even harder.
Housekeeping, I thought.Or the wrong room.
Could’ve been a stranger. I kept the chain on. As a travel nurse, I’ve had my fair share of people trying to rob or harass me. That’s why, when I opened the door, I only did so by a crack, with the bolt-and-chain still firmly in place.
What I didn’t expect was who I found there.
“Jake!”
The exclamation left me before I could stop it.
Jake stood outside in a jacket that was too light for the weather. The blanket I always saw wrapped around him at the estate was nowhere in sight. Dark circles under his eyes. He looked worse.
“Hey, Olivia,” he said, smiling softly.
I didn’t know what to say.
“What are you doing here?”
Jake’s smile grew a little wider. That same smile — warm, like he was letting me in on something. He lifted his hands. Two styrofoam cups with coffee sleeves.
“I told them I was going out for a walk,” he said. “Thought you might need some proper coffee. Highway caffeine is lethal business.”
