Page 72 of Runaway for the Grumpy Daddy

He did not tell me.

So I sat there in my socks, looking at my phone across the room and listening to water run over the plate. The screen stayed dark. Boone was in a cell. Cash and Wyatt were searching roads I had already left. Biscuit would be at the cabin door, furious at an absence she had not approved.

Every part of me wanted to grab the phone and run.

I did neither.

Derek rinsed the plate, loaded it into the dishwasher, wiped one drop of water from the counter, and finally glanced over.

"You can relax, Jojo."

"Okay."

"Everything's back to normal."

He believed that.

That was the useful thing.

I looked at the pale green soap by the sink. At the towel on the oven. At my phone charging where he had placed it.

Then I smiled the small, grateful smile he liked.

And I waited.

***

At eleven-twelve, ten feet away and one wall over, Derek texted me.

The phone lit on the kitchen counter, a white rectangle in the dark.

I lay on the couch beneath the throw blanket he had assigned me and watched the screen fade before I let myself breathe again.

The bedroom door was open six inches. Derek liked it that way. Open enough to hear whether I moved. Closed enough to remind me I was not invited in.

The apartment had settled around us. Refrigerator hum. Heat ticking in the baseboards. A truck changing gears on the street below. Derek's breathing beyond the wall, not asleep yet. Too shallow. Too arranged.

The phone lit again.

From the couch I could read the lock-screen previews if I narrowed my eyes.

DEREK: Proud of you for finally making the adult choice.

My heart struck once, hard.

Then the screen went black.

I did not move.

The smart thing would have been relief. He had withdrawn the complaint. Boone would come out. I had done what I came to do, traded myself for the correction, solved the equation the old way.

The old way always made me the missing number.

Another light.

DEREK: Tomorrow we'll talk about what you owe me for cleaning this up.

Warm on the surface. Ugly underneath. His specialty.