Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
STEVIE
Two days later the knock comes soft. My paranoia doesn’t. My heart bolts upright like it just heard its Miranda rights.
Part of me, the guilty, criminal part, thinks they know. Someone saw me. Someone reported me. Saul’s here to tell me I’ve been compromised and we’re moving to a cement bunker in rural Alaska, where the sun sets in January and Olive Garden is considered international cuisine.
I’ll befriend a moose and develop a love-hate relationship with canned soup and seasonal depression
But when I open the door, Saul is just... Saul.
Holding a shopping bag. Wearing the same soft blue flannel that keeps showing up like a recurring dream I’m not ready to wake from. Looking at me with that half-concerned, half-worried-I-might-bite-him expression he gets when I’m spiraling.
“Hey,” he says. “Brought you something.”
“You know you don’t have to keep bringing me things,” I say, even though every cell in my body is screaming ‘keep bringing me things forever, you emotionally competent bear of a man.’
I step back to let him in. “I’m starting to feel like a charity case. Or a very high-maintenance houseplant.”
“Houseplants don’t talk back.” He sets the bag on my couch. “You definitely talk back.”
“It’s one of my few remaining personality traits. I’m trying to preserve it.”
He pulls out a throw blanket. Bright teal with a geometric pattern. As in: jewel tone. As in: this man walked into a store, saw color, and thought Stevie should have this.
“Thought your couch could use some color,” he says, voice doing that thing where it pretends he’s not nervous about overstepping.
I stare at the blanket. At the teal that practically vibrates against the beige backdrop of my sad little apartment.
“Saul...”
“And flour.” He pulls out a bag. “And sugar. Brown and white. Noticed you were running low.”
He noticed my baking supplies.
He was in my kitchen, checking locks, probably, or pretending to, and he noticed I was almost out of flour and sugar.
“You’re taking inventory of my pantry now?” I say it like a joke but my ovaries say hi and he’s nesting, and my brain is filing this under foreplay via bulk goods.
“Just the critical items. Butter. Flour. Chocolate chips. Sanity.” He almost smiles. “Can’t have you running out of stress-baking materials. That’s a safety hazard.”
“For who?”
“For me. If you can’t bake, you’ll find other coping mechanisms. Probably worse ones.”
He has no idea how right he is. If he knew, he’d install a 24/7 pastry surveillance system.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. “Really. This is... you didn’t have to do any of this.”
“I know.” He gives me that look again. Like he’s flipping through a classified dossier I can’t read but somehow stars me on every page. “You okay? You look...”
“Tired?” I offer.
“Different.” He tilts his head slightly. “Something changed.”
My stomach drops straight through the floor and keeps going.
Does he know? Can he tell? Is there some kind of federal witness behavior analysis that detects when someone has committed multiple felonies against the person they’re supposed to be hiding from?
Am I glowing? Is the room humid with guilt? Did I exude ‘I stalked Dario’ energy?
“I’m fine,” I say, which is a lie. “Just had a rough couple days.” Also a lie. “You know. The usual existential crisis about being erased from existence.” Okay, that one’s true.
He doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t push.
“Have you eaten today?”
“I had coffee.”
“That’s not food, Stevie.”
“It has calories. Arguably.”
“Arguable calories don’t count.” He gestures toward the door. “Come on. There’s a burger place two blocks from here. You need actual food and I need to not worry about you passing out from malnutrition.”
“Is that in the handbook? ‘Ensure witness consumes adequate nutrients’?”
“Page forty-seven. Right after bring her blankets so she stops living in a beige depression cave.”
I laugh.
It surprises me, the sound coming out easy, unforced. Real.
Saul watches. That same way he did after the waffle iron story, cataloging the laugh like it might disappear if he doesn’t save it properly.
“There she is,” he says.
And something reckless inside me sits up, grabs a knife, and whispers he sees you.
I need to bake something. Or fuck someone. Possibly him.
The burger place is one health code violation away from condemned. The tables wobble, the vinyl sticks, and I’d bet my fake identity the food’s going to slap.
We slide into a booth by the window. The vinyl squeaks under us.
Saul orders a burger and fries. I get the same because my brain’s buffering like a cursed internet connection and decision-making’s not on the menu.
The food arrives.
The burgers are stacked like architectural sin. The fries are hot enough to burn through grief. I immediately fall halfway in love with the cook.
“So,” Saul says, unwrapping his burger like a man who doesn’t realize every movement he makes is being studied for its potential in future masturbation material. “How’s the job going?”
“Incredible,” I say, sarcasm thick. “Life-changing. I’ve entered so many billing codes I’ve started dreaming in medical terminology. Last night I was hunted through a sleep forest by something called a CPT-99214.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
“Yesterday I processed fourteen claims for the same colonoscopy. Fourteen. Either someone’s billing fraud, or this guy has a digestive system from a Guillermo del Toro movie.”
He laughs. Not the polite chuckle he usually gives me like I’m a feral cat he’s trying not to spook. A real one. Full-face, crinkled-eyes, makes-my-stomach-do-weird-things kind of laugh.
Stop noticing his face. His eyes. His laugh lines. His goddamn forearms. Stop imagining what that laugh would sound like muffled against your throat.
“What about you?” I ask quickly, because I need to interrupt my own spiral before I start ovulating through my jeans. “How’s the glamorous life of a U.S. Marshal?”
“Mostly paperwork. Some driving. Occasional moments of checking on witnesses who haven’t eaten real food in three days.”
“I ate real food. There was definitely a granola bar situation at some point.”
“Granola bars don’t count.”
“Agree to disagree.”
He steals one of my fries like we’re already sleeping together. No warning, no apology, just reaches across the table like this is his goddamn booth now. Like we’re a Thing that shares food and trauma and unsolicited houseplants.
My body reacts like he just slipped a ring on my finger.
Excuse me? That was my fry. My emotional support fry.
I stare at his hand retreating, long fingers, callused knuckles, absolutely unbothered.
My clit files a complaint for harassment via French fry.
I steal one of his fries back. Aggressively. Eye contact. Establish dominance or die.
He lifts a brow. I lift mine back. This is foreplay now. We’ve crossed the line.
We eat in silence for a minute, the kind that feels loaded. Like something’s building. Like if one of us reaches across the table again, it won’t be for food.
And maybe this is us now. The U.S. Marshal and the identity-less girl with cookies and no chill, splitting fries in a condemned burger joint, one bad decision away from disaster sex on a countertop.
It feels... nice. Which is terrifying.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, because apparently I hate peace.
“Sure.”
“How do you do this? The whole tragic transformation thing. Meet people mid-life implosion and just... hope they crawl out of the wreckage?”
He’s quiet for a moment. Chewing. Thinking.
“Some days I don’t know if I do it well,” he admits. “You see people at rock bottom. You try to help them climb out. Some of them make it. Some of them don’t.”
“What about the ones who don’t?”
“You learn to live with it.” He looks at me, and there’s something raw in his expression. Honest. “You do what you can. You show up. You bring flour. You fix curtain rods. You make sure they haven’t set the apartment on fire. You hope that counts.”
“Is it? Enough?”
“Sometimes.” He takes another fry. “Sometimes they surprise you. They build lives you didn’t think were possible. They find ways to be okay that you never expected.”
“And sometimes they don’t.”
“And sometimes they don’t,” he agrees. “But you keep showing up anyway. Because that’s the job. And because.” He stops. Looks away.
“Because what?”
“Because sometimes someone’s worth the mess. Even if they don’t know it yet.”
My brain spins a wheel of responses and lands on static. My uterus spins a wheel and lands on ‘marry him immediately.’ My common sense has left the building and is filing for early retirement.
I retaliate. Grab one of his fries like I’m not internally monologuing about his mouth and all the ways I want to ruin him. My heart is doing jumping jacks in lingerie.
We finish eating. Walk back to my apartment in the fading light. He waits while I unlock the door, that same patient presence he always has.
“Call me if you need anything,” he says. “Even if it’s just to emotionally process someone’s cursed digestive tract.”
Sir. I will. You’re going to regret that offer.
“What if I need someone to explain why anyone would need fourteen colonoscopies?”
“Then I’ll do some research and get back to you.”
I laugh again. Easier this time.
“Thanks, Saul. For dinner. For the blanket. For...” I gesture vaguely at everything. “For the food-based emotional manipulation.”
“Anytime.” He hesitates. Something passing across his face that I can’t quite read. “You’re going to be okay, Stevie. I know it doesn’t feel like it yet. But you’re going to figure this out.”
He says it like he believes it. Like he believes in me.
“Goodnight,” I manage.
“Goodnight.”
He leaves and I lock the door behind him.
The apartment feels different. Not empty. Just... sinisterly stable.
I stand in the middle of it afraid if I breathe too deeply the government-issued beige might colonize my lungs and turn me into a woman who owns a Roomba.
I drape the teal blanket over the couch and step back to look at it. Bright against the beige. Like someone tossed a grenade of color into a Pottery Barn catalog.
I stare at the kitchen. Everything’s full. Flour. Sugar. Brown and white. My anxiety baking rations are stocked like Saul’s preparing me for war with Pillsbury.
Tomorrow, I could bake. Something new. Something Beth would make. Maybe almond blondies. Something light. Controlled. Not cookies with buried obsession in every bite.
The thought doesn’t make me want to scream.
And that’s when it hits me.
I feel better.
Not good, let’s not get crazy, but better. The crushing weight on my chest has lifted slightly. The apartment doesn’t feel like a coffin anymore. It feels like... a place someone could maybe live.
Saul did that. Saul with his blankets and his flour and his fry-stealing and his quiet certainty that I’m going to be okay.
He’s making this work. He’s making Beth Taylor survivable.
I sink onto the couch. Pull the teal blanket into my lap. Feel the soft fabric under my fingers.
This is what surviving looks like. Apparently. One man showing up. Remembering your coffee preference. Refusing to let you starve to death in your anxiety cave. Dropping fries on the table like a breadcrumb trail out of the wreckage.
It’s terrifying. Discovering your depression has been slowly replaced with a Target starter pack of emotional stability and you didn’t notice until the third receipt.
I could be Beth.
The kind of woman who meal preps. Who owns seasonal candles. Who refers to her U.S. Marshal handler as a friend and doesn’t mean it sexually.
Okay, that may never be true. The man speaks directly to my clit. But the rest is.
The thought should feel like relief.
It doesn’t.
It feels like drowning.
Because if Beth becomes survivable, if this life starts to work, then Stevie is gone. Not dormant. Not in hibernation. Gone. Deleted from the hard drive, wiped from the registry, replaced with a clean install of beige stability.
New name. New job. No cookies for murderers. No chaos. No teeth. Just Beth.
And the thought of that sends me launching off the couch like I’ve just been possessed by my own ghost.
I grab the pen. Black. Heavy. Familiar.
The D.M. stamped on the side throbs in my hand like a heartbeat I forgot I had. Dario’s initials. Dario’s pen. Dario’s orbit.
Dario, who saw me when I was still teeth and glitter and courtroom orgasms. Who tasted my grief in cookie form and smiled like he’d been waiting for it. Dario, who looked at me like I was art, not a witness.
Saul sees Beth. He sees someone worth saving. Someone to nurture. To protect. To feed.
But Dario saw Stevie.
Obsessive. Feral. Unwell.
Me.
And he stayed.
Saul’s giving me a life.
Dario reminds me I had one.
And the horrifying thing is... I need both.
I need Saul’s groceries and curtain rods and steady fucking hands. I need him to keep me fed and dressed and mostly alive.
But I need Dario’s chaos. I need to stalk his house at midnight and leave cookies like a heat-seeking missile of identity preservation.
Because if I stop, if I commit fully to this life with the teal blanket and the correct password to the billing software and the Whole Foods coffee, then Stevie disappears.
And I miss her.
She was loud. She was unhinged. She stared down mobsters and left crumbs of herself in their life.
She’s not dead.
Not yet.
I reach out and touch the pen again in the dark. Metal cool under my fingers. It’s solid. Real. Me.
I’m going back.
To Dario’s house. To that orbit. To the place where Stevie still leaves echoes.
Not because Saul failed.
Because Saul’s succeeding. Too well.
And I’m not ready to disappear quietly under a teal fucking throw blanket.
Not yet.
Fuck that. Not ever.