CHAPTER 9 LANA
LANA
Jordan spent the night ravishing my body. He had me two times before the sun came up. Being with him was different from anything I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never felt more beautiful.
I close my eyes and I can still feel it.
The second time, slower than the first, his hands pinning mine above my head while he moved in me like he had all night to prove a point.
Look at me, he'd said, low against my ear—and I had, and I'd come apart with his eyes locked on mine and my own name breaking in my throat.
No one has ever asked me to look at them before.
No one has ever made being seen feel like the safest place in the whole world.
That first night he held me close as I finally closed my eyes. Then a miracle occurred, and I finally slept. Not just an hour or two between panicked rushes of adrenaline either. My body, used to its permanent fight-or-flight, collapsed into the safety and warmth of Jordan’s massive arms.
I don’t mean it to, but somehow we carry on like this for the next two weeks. Jordan becomes such a permanent fixture in my world that my life starts to melt into his. I listen to his country music. He reads chapters from my romance books… But only the good ones.
The school hasn’t reopened yet, but he fills the space and then some.
The quiet moments of my life become filled with laughter, but we talk about the real stuff too.
I tell Jordan about losing my parents and my subsequent years in foster care.
He tells me that all he’s ever wanted is a family of his own.
It’s all very small town happily ever after, and for the first time in my life I’m starting to see myself in the leading role. It’s strange honestly, but there’s something about Jordan that makes life feel like a fairy tale I never dared to dream about.
Today Jordan is working and I’ve just gotten out of bed. I check the clock on my nightstand to find that it’s already 9:30 am. That’s a record for me as far as sleeping in goes. It’s amazing how different I feel on a full night’s sleep.
I stumble to the kitchen ready to pour myself a cup of ambition a la Dolly Parton when my phone buzzes on the counter.
I look at it with a giant smile on my face expecting to see a text from Jordan illuminating the screen. But when I find a message from an unknown number instead, everything goes still. My stomach instantly tightens into familiar knots.
I have not gotten a text from an unknown number in eleven months. But I know exactly what this is before I even check the message.
My body knows. My hands know. My heart knows.
I pick up the phone and read the message. It doesn’t take long because there are only four words followed by an emoji.
Cute town, baby girl. (fire emoji)
In the five seconds after I read those four words, reality comes flooding back.
It was him. The arson at the school that could have killed all those kids was my fault.
I brought him here. I’m not in a romantic comedy, I’m in a fucking domestic thriller.
I’m not the girl who gets the happily ever after and I never have been.
I let my guard down. I let myself forget what his syntax looks like.
I had let myself forget the particular weight of baby girl in his mouth, the way it never meant darling and never meant sweetheart.
I let myself forget the way it’s always meant I know where you are.
This is how he plays it. He never moves the second he finds me.
He likes to sit in it, to watch, to let me build a life soft enough to be worth burning down.
Then, the moment I stop looking over my shoulder, he reminds me he was there the whole time.
The fire wasn't the message. The fire was him getting comfortable.
The text is the message. Two weeks of safety dissolve in that one second, like sugar in hot water.
Given the choice, my body will not scream. It never does. My body, instead, becomes very quiet. I know how to handle it. This situation isn’t anything new.
I set my phone face down on the counter. I don’t slam it or throw it. I don’t need to look at the screen again. The four words are now downloaded in my head, where they will live rent-free for the rest of my life.
I walk to the bathroom and close the door behind me.
I lock it out of habit even though there is no one in the house.
Then I lift the lid of the toilet, kneel on the bathmat, and throw up the last of what’s in my stomach from last night.
It’s calm and efficient the way my body has learned to do everything.
When there is nothing left, I sit back on my heels.
I flush.
I rinse my mouth at the sink.
I look at my own face in the mirror. The woman looking back at me has freckles that were lit up by the late sun coming through pines not that long ago. The woman in the mirror was carried out of a burning building, kissed in the bed of a truck and told she is not alone anymore.
Then another truth hits me like a bolt of lightning. The woman in the mirror is going to leave.
I know it in my gut before I let myself say it aloud. It’s like I watch myself decide from a distance. I know it the way I have always known what is about to happen.
I have to leave. It’s the kind thing to do.
I can’t drag Jordan through this mess. He deserves so much better.
He deserves uncomplicated and easy. It will be just like the situation with his ex.
He won’t follow. He’ll let me go in an instant.
He’ll realize that not wasting another minute on me is the right thing.
Leaving is the only kind thing to do.
I start packing and not the way a person packs for a trip. I pack like a pro. I pack like someone who has done this so many times before. There’s no crying or prioritizing documents. Everything and I mean everything goes in the trunk of my car.
Passport. Birth certificate. The folder with my certifications.
The hard drive. The cash I keep folded inside the lining of a coat I never wear.
Clothes I can carry in one duffel. The good knife.
The good pan. The book I am halfway through, because I am still the person who can't leave a book unfinished, even now.
I leave the deadbolt Jordan installed and the chair too. Maybe the next person won’t need them, but if they do I hope it gives them a little peace.
I tell myself the things I always tell myself. Only this time, they don’t go down quite as easily.
I tell myself that Jordan wants a wife. He told me he wanted a wife.
He wants kids walking to school and Sunday dinners and a porch full of people on the Fourth of July.
Truth is, I’ve always known deep down that life can’t be for me.
When I sat on his tailgate and looked at a valley with his life in it, for one terrifying, ridiculous second, I let myself picture my life being here too.
But I cannot be his wife. I can’t be anyone’s wife and I certainly cannot be the woman his kids walk to. I am a fire. The chaos follows me everywhere I go and I can’t keep pretending that isn’t true.
I have to leave now before I take any more days from him that he can't get back. I swallow back a pang of doubt and grab a pen before my emotions can take over. I scribble the note on the back of a grocery receipt.
Jordan, I'm sorry. I can't ruin your life with my mess. You deserve a big life in your beautifully small town and someone is going to win the gift of a lifetime to share it with you. Thank you for the best two weeks of my life. Please don't come after me. Lana.
I don’t write I love you because I have no right to. Jordan's on shift until tonight. By the time he sees the note, I’ll be gone. I put the receipt on the kitchen counter under the cabinet where he wrote his phone number in Sharpie, which feels like a lifetime ago.
I look at the phone number for ten excruciating seconds. My stomach lurches and aches. A small voice in my mind is screaming for me to pick up the phone and dial. But in the end, I know that’s selfish.
The last thing I want is Jordan putting himself between me and some psychopath arsonist. So I don’t call it. Instead I pick up the duffel, swallow back my broken heart, and lock the deadbolt behind me.