Page 30 of Cruel Kiss

"Here," he says.

I don't take it. "What is that?"

"The tracker app. Everything's on it. The car, both backpacks, a few others I've tucked around here and there. If you want to turn them off, be my guest. I'll show you how, if you'd like. You want to glue them all to me and watch whereIgo for a change? You're welcome to do that, too. I've got nothing to hide from youanymore, Calista." He keeps holding it out. "It's your show. It always was."

The wind goes clean out of me.

Even while knowing it's a bad idea, I look down at the screen.

There's a photo of me on the home screen behind the app. I have no memory of it being taken. I'm on the dock at the lake, laughing at something, my hair's a windswept mess, my feet are in the water, and I look…

I look happy. I look like a woman who doesn't own a mirror and doesn't need one.

The app is open on top of it. A few scattered little dots on a map. My car out front. Two backpacks upstairs in the hall closet where the kids dumped them. My whole world, all accounted for. All exactly where they're supposed to be.

I stand there with his whole phone in my hand, his whole surveillance state and his whole secret and a photo of me laughing, and I genuinely cannot decide whether to throw it at his head or not.

"I hate you," I tell him.

It's the least convincing it's ever sounded.

Ronan raises one insufferable eyebrow.

"Does it make you feel better when you say that?"

"Yes!" I explode. "No! Maybe! I don't know!"

He shrugs. "Alright. Well, if you do figure it out, let me know. I'm curious."

Then he takes the newspaper back off the counter, unfolds it, puts the glasses back on, and goes back to reading the sports section.

I look at the back of his stupid neck.

As I do, I think how easy it would be to strangle him with my bare hands. Well, it wouldn't really bethateasy. My fingers wouldn't even reach all the way around, probably, but I could give it an honest effort.

Or I could just climb up on the island and sit on his face until he suffocated, which has the advantage of him not being able to talk anymore while it happened.

Honestly, both are tempting.

I set his phone down on the counter next to his elbow. Gently. Because I'm a bigger person than he is.

Then I go make myself a cup of coffee, and I make it wrong, way too much sugar, out of pure spite, and chug the whole thing standing up while he reads the box scores like a man who's already won.

He hasn't won.

He never will.

I just haven't decided how he loses yet.

9

CALI

Summer camp lets out at four on Fridays, so at 3:45, Ronan parks the black SUV at the curb across from the building, in the shade of a big maple tree that hasn't quite figured out it's summer yet. He turns the engine off but leaves the key in the slot.

"I'll get them," he offers.

My knee-jerk reaction is to argue. "I can do it."