Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
STEVIE
The apartment doesn’t feel like mine anymore.
Four hours ago it was ours. Me and Enzo and his terrible eggs and the kind of morning-after glow that makes you think maybe you’re not a complete disaster.
I agreed we would leave. Tonight.
Now it’s a crime scene. Somebody call CSI: Witness Protection Edition. We’ve got evidence everywhere. His mug. His smell still clinging to my couch. The indent in my sheets where a man who kills people for a living held me like I was something precious.
And Saul Bennett, U.S. Marshal, Man Who Brings Teal Blankets, standing in my kitchen making coffee like he didn’t just shatter my entire existence.
Cool. This is fine. Everything’s fine.
I’m still wearing Enzo’s shirt because I’m a well-adjusted adult who definitely doesn’t use stolen clothing as emotional support.
I don’t change.
“Coffee’s ready,” Saul says quietly.
I walk to the kitchen on legs that don’t feel like mine. Take the mug he offers. Stand on the opposite side of the island because I don’t know how to be close to him right now.
He looks terrible. Tired in a way that goes deeper than needing sleep. There’s something in his expression. Hurt, maybe. Or resignation. Or both.
“We need to talk about what happens next,” he says.
“I know.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“So I disappear. Again.” The words taste like burnt toast. “New city. New name. New beige apartment where I slowly lose my mind until I spiral quietly until I lose my grip on reality and hump someone’s tie again. Rinse, repeat.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
I look up at him. “What do you mean?”
He sets down his coffee.
“Beth wasn’t working,” he says slowly. “The invisible thing. Clearly.” He almost smiles. “You lasted weeks before you started breaking into houses.”
“In my defense, the door was unlocked. I feel like I was invited.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. And something in my chest aches, because even now, even in the middle of this, he’s still him. Still steady. Still kind. Still here.
“What if we tried something different?” he asks. “With the new identity. Something that doesn’t feel like slow death.”
Hope flickers. Dangerous. I stomp it down. “Like what?”
“You said baking keeps you sane. What if that was real? A bakery. Small town. Somewhere you could actually build a life.” He’s thinking out loud now, working through logistics.
“Hiding in plain sight. People notice when someone’s trying to be invisible.
But someone who’s just living? That could work. ”
“You could do that? Make that happen?”
“I’d have to clear it. Make a case.” He holds my gaze. “But yeah. I think I could.”
A bakery. My own bakery. In a small town where people might actually eat my cookies instead of me just stress-baking into the void like a grief goblin.
It’s perfect. It’s everything I wanted.
And I’m supposed to be grateful. Excited. Thrilled that I get a real identity this time instead of Beth Taylor, Data Entry Specialist, Featuring: Beige.
But all I can think is: Enzo won’t know where I am. He’ll come back tonight and I’ll be gone and he’ll never taste my lemon bars. Never burn another batch of eggs in my kitchen. Never know that I would’ve chosen him. Them. This. All of it.
I’m getting my dream and losing everything that made me want to live long enough to have dreams.
“But I still can’t contact them.” It’s not a question. “Enzo. Dario. They can’t know where I am.”
Saul’s expression softens with something that looks like pain. “No. They can’t.”
“He’s coming back tonight.” My voice cracks on the word. “And I’ll just be gone.”
“That’s safer for everyone. You, him.”
“I know.” I set down my coffee because my hands are shaking too hard to hold it. “I know it’s safer. I know it’s the right call. I know all the logical reasons why this has to happen.”
I press my palms flat against the counter.
“But he said he’d come back and I was counting the hours, Saul.
I was so happy I forgot what sad felt like.
And it isn’t just about me. What we were starting was important to him too.
He lost himself too. In that family. This is going to hurt him more than you know. ”
He’s quiet. What is there to say?
“When?” I ask.
“Today. Before.” He stops. “Before tonight.”
Before Enzo comes back. Before he walks into this apartment and finds it empty. Finds his mug in the rack and no explanation. No goodbye. Just gone.
“Okay.” The word comes out hollow. “Okay. I’ll pack.”
I turn toward the bedroom.
“Stevie.”
I stop. Don’t turn around.
“For what it’s worth,” Saul says quietly, “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help. But I’m sorry this is how it has to be.”
I nod. Can’t speak. Walk to my bedroom. And stand there, in the middle of Beth Taylor’s room, trying to remember how to breathe.
Packing doesn’t take long.
Beth Taylor didn’t own much. Clothes that never felt like mine. Books I bought to fill shelves. Kitchen supplies that got more use than anything else.
But there are other things. Things that matter.
Dario’s pen. I hold it for a moment. Run my thumb over the engraving. D.M. Cool metal warming against my skin.
The tie is there too. Blue silk. Still faintly smelling of cedar and bergamot.
And the shirt. His shirt. The grey one that I’ve slept in more nights than I can count.
I fold them carefully. Place them in my bag like the treasures they are.
I’m packing a crime boss’s accessories like they’re religious relics. Saint Dario of the Unlocked Door. Saint Enzo of the Burnt Eggs.
I’m building a shrine to men I can’t keep.
This is healthy coping. Very normal. My therapist would have thoughts. So many thoughts. Possibly a podcast.
I can hear Saul on the phone, his voice low and steady. “...non-standard relocation, yes. Given the circumstances... I’ll take full responsibility... no, she’s cooperating fully...”
He’s fighting for me. Arguing with supervisors, risking his career, all so I can have a bakery instead of another beige prison.
And I’m in here mourning two other men while wearing one of their shirts.
Enzo. I need more Enzo.
His mug.
I walk to the kitchen. Take it from the dish rack.
It’s just a mug. Cheap. Probably cost three dollars at some store I don’t remember. But it’s his.
And when he comes back tonight and I’m not here, his morning coffee will be in the wrong cup. And maybe that’s stupid to care about. Maybe in the grand scale of everything I’m losing, a three-dollar mug shouldn’t matter.
But it matters. Because when he reaches for it, muscle memory guiding his hand to the counter, and it’s not there?
He’ll know I took it when I left. That I wanted something of his to keep. That I’m probably somewhere right now, holding it, crying into the chipped handle like it’s a fucking engagement ring.
I’m stealing his coffee mug as a breakup memento.
This is the saddest thing I’ve ever done and I once ate an entire rotisserie chicken alone in my car while watching my ex’s Instagram stories.
I put it in my bag.
The teal blanket is on the couch. Loud and defiant and refusing to be neutral.
Same, bitch. Same.
The succulent is still on the windowsill. The one Saul brought me. The one that’s supposed to be impossible to kill.
I should take it. I don’t.
Let it stay here. Let it be the one thing that survives me in this apartment. Maybe the next tenant will water it. Maybe they’ll wonder who left behind a plant.
Or maybe it’ll die anyway, and that’ll be poetic as fuck.
He’s off the phone now. Watching me from the kitchen doorway.
I pick up the blanket. Fold it carefully. Add it to my bag.
He wasn’t expecting that. I can see it in the way he goes still.
“You’re taking that?”
“You gave it to me.” I don’t look at him. “You gave me a lot of things. The blanket. The coffee. The plant.” My voice wavers. “You kept showing up. Kept making this survivable. That mattered. It still matters.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “The bakery’s approved,” he finally says. “Colorado. Small college town. You’ll be Zoey Carter. Twenty-eight. Culinary school graduate. Your shop is called The Blue Door.”
Zoey Carter.
I test it in my head. On my tongue. It doesn’t feel like mine. Maybe it will.
“The Blue Door,” I repeat. Like Dario’s door.
“There’s an apartment above the shop. Start-up funding. A real lease.” He almost smiles. “You’ll have a life this time. An actual one.”
“Cool. Just let me finish shoving my trauma into a tote bag first.”
“Two hours. Processing first, then I’ll drive you. Stay the first week to make sure you’re settled.”
Like before. Except nothing like before.
“I need to make cookies,” I say.
He blinks. “What?”
“I can’t just leave. Not without.” I gesture at the kitchen. “It’s the only language I speak. Grief cookies. Apology muffins. Heartbreak biscotti. I bake my feelings. It’s tragic but efficient.”
He doesn’t argue. Just nods.
I bake.
Peanut butter chocolate chip. Enzo’s favorite. The ones I made him that first night, when he showed up to threaten me and left with Tupperware.
The kitchen fills with the smell of butter and sugar and goodbye.
I leave the cookies on the counter. And a note. Handwritten. The hardest thing I’ve ever written. It takes three times.
First version: I love you and I’m sorry and please don’t forget me and this is killing me and
Too much. Too desperate. Too true.
Second version: Had to go. You were great. Thanks for the orgasms and emotional stability.
Too flippant. Like I’m leaving a Yelp review for dick that changed my life.
Third version: I didn’t choose to leave. You were real. We were real. I’m sorry. - S
Still not enough. Will never be enough. But it’s all I have.
I set it next to the cookies and walk away before I add a PS that says I would’ve married you in a gas station if you’d asked.
Beth Taylor’s ghost will live here until someone else moves in. Until another person fills these rooms and never knows that a woman named Stevie once stood in this kitchen wearing her lover’s shirt, falling in love with men she couldn’t keep.
Saul waits by the door.
I take one last look. The counter where Enzo burned eggs. The couch where we watched movies. The chair where his jacket lived.
The mug is in my bag. The blanket. Dario’s things. Everything I could carry of the life I almost had.
“Ready?” Saul asks.
No. “Yes.”
I walk out the door. Lock it behind me.
Beth Taylor doesn’t live here anymore. And Stevie Reeves is disappearing.
Again.
The car is quiet.
Saul drives. I sit in the passenger seat with my fingers wrapped in the fabric of Enzo’s shirt, trying not to think about him walking into that apartment tonight. Finding the cookies. Reading the note.
Trying not to imagine his face.
He’ll think I ran. That I couldn’t handle it. That I’m the same flighty disaster who broke into a house wearing his boss’s cologne.
He won’t know I fought. That I begged Saul to let me stay. That I would’ve risked everything just for one more morning of burnt eggs and bad coffee.
He’ll never know I was falling in love with him.
Past tense now.
Grief is just love with nowhere to go.
And I’ve got enough love for two crime family members and a U.S. Marshal, apparently, because my heart is an overachieving slut with no sense of self-preservation.
The city shrinks in the rearview mirror.
Toward Colorado. Toward Zoey Carter. Toward a blue door and a bakery and a life I might want to live.
Even if every cookie I bake for the rest of my life tastes like grief.
I close my eyes.
Press Enzo’s shirt against my chest. And try to hold onto the feeling of being seen.
Before I disappeared.
Again.
Stevie Reeves, Professional Ghost, now featuring: More Trauma and a Stolen Mug Collection.
Coming soon to a small town near you.
The cookies will be excellent.
I’ll cry into every single one.