Page 15 of Devotion
The chef. Miley Torres.
She didn't deserve to suffer because of my reckless actions. None of this was her fault, yet she was the one paying the price for it.
But Trisha didn't need to know that. Neither did anyone else. To the world, I'd keep my masks firmly in place. They were easier than the truth. Safer, too. Because I'd worn them for so long that I wasn't even sure what was left underneath anymore.
“Set up a meeting with her soon,” I said.
Trisha nodded and reached for her phone. Then she stopped. She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read, which was rare, because I could usually read Trisha the way I read scripts.
“One question,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“What happens when she finds out the allergy incident wasn’t an accident?”
The elevator arrived. The doors opened with a soft chime. I stepped inside, turned, and looked at Trisha standing in the corridor with her cold coffee, crooked glasses, and a face that said she already knew this was going to end badly.
I smiled. “If I say nothing,” I said, “and you say nothing… how exactly will she find out?”
Trisha stared at me. The doors began to close. She stuck her foot in the gap and held them.
“That is not a plan,” she said. “That is a ticking bomb with a bow on it.”
“Then I suggest we both keep our mouths shut.” I made a motion of zipping my lips.
She pulled her foot back. The doors closed. I leaned against the elevator wall and watched the numbers drop.
Miley Torres. Auburn hair. Citrus perfume. A woman who saved my life with an EpiPen and steady hands while I was busy ruining hers.
I told myself it was manageable. That I’d fix the damage, control the narrative, and move on.
I’d definitely be meeting her.
Soon.
CHAPTER 5
Miley
The stick hit me across the shoulder before I made it two steps through my own front door.
I screamed. The grocery bag flew out of my hands, and I heard the eggs crack inside it as it hit the floor, which was fitting because my life was also cracking and nobody was catching that either.
“MILEY?”
Anna’s voice. Coming from the dark of my apartment, where she was standing in the entryway holding a broomstick like a weapon and wearing an expression caught between horror and adrenaline.
“Anna, what the HELL!”
“What are you doing sneaking into your own apartment like a serial killer?” She lowered the broom but didn’t let go of it. “You’re wearing a hood and a face mask, and you came through the door without turning the lights on! I thought you were a burglar!”
“I live here, Anna!”
“You looked like you were robbing here! Why are you dressed like that?”
Because my face was on every news outlet, every entertainment blog, every social media feed in the country, that’s why. Because I couldn’t walk to the grocery store two blocks away without someone recognizing me as the chef who poisoned Christopher Vale. Because the cashier at the corner market had stared at me for so long, I pulled my hood up, lifted my mask, and hurried home like a fugitive, hunched over a bag of eggs, bread, and the last of my dignity.
Now, I was standing in my own dark apartment wearing a disguise to buy groceries, and that was the moment it hit me. All of it. Everything that had happened in the last two weeks came loose at once.
