Page 273 of The Professor's Wife

And I started walking back toward town.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Oliver had been gone for nearly two hours before I stepped outside.

I told myself I had waited to be certain he wouldn’t return. I had watched from the bedroom window because the white sedan remained parked across the street, and I didn’t know whether it belonged to a detective, one of Oliver’s colleagues, or someone who had nothing to do with us at all.

But the truth was, I had been afraid. Every time I stepped out I was risking everything. But Tristan— I couldn’t resist him.

I walked quickly through town, carrying only my purse and the words Tristan had given me the day before.

Then come back.

I had. I stood in front of room 333 and knocked. There was no answer. I waited outside, listening hard for movements. The television. Running water, footsteps—anything.

Nothing.

I knocked again.

“Tristan?”

My voice sounded small in the empty hallway.

I pressed my ear against the door. There was only the faint hum of the air-conditioning and the distant ding of an elevator opening somewhere below.

Maybe he was asleep. Maybe he had drunk himself into a state not even my knocking could disturb.

I knocked harder.

“Tristan?”

Still nothing. I stepped back and stared at the number on the door as though I might have gotten it wrong. Three-three-three.

The same damn room.

I paced to the elevator and returned before it could arrive. Then I knocked again, using the side of my fist this time. No one answered.

A housekeeper appeared at the far end of the hall, pushing a cart piled with folded towels and tiny bottles of shampoo. I immediately moved away from Tristan’s door and pretended to search through my purse.

She smiled politely as she passed.

I waited until she disappeared around the corner before knocking once more.

“Please be here,” I whispered.

Nothing.

I returned to the elevator and rode down to the lobby. I considered asking the receptionist whether Tristan had checked out, but the question felt dangerous. It was too official, to get an answer—maybe I wasn’t ready for the answer.

Instead, I walked outside.

The parking lot stretched along the side of the hotel, half full beneath the morning sun. It was brutally hot, but I didn’t feel a thing. I wandered between the row of cars, searching for the older camper van he’d told me about the previous day.

It was gone.

I stopped walking and took deep breaths. Dots formed in my vision. I inhaled sharply, held it in my lungs, and let the air slowly out of my lungs. For several seconds, all I could hear wasthe traffic beyond the lot and the hard pulse of blood rushing inside my ears.

He left.