Chapter 7 #2
She gives me a look, one where she appreciates and doesn’t quite believe what I’m saying.
She slips her hand out from beneath mine and takes a sip of coffee.
“Well, we should have done this before I even moved in, but… I was thinking it would be good for the three of us to go on a trip together. Me, Nate, and Owen.” She looks down, rotating the mug on the table. "See if we really are a we."
Something in my chest pulls tight and then loosens, because I want this for her so badly it hurts.
"Nora. Go. Of course you should go."
"It's Wanda." She winces. "I'd ask Felicity to take her—she's closer—but she's allergic. Could I drop her off at your place? I’ll bring over her food and litter box. The fat menace mostly sleeps."
I’m already nodding. "Yeah. Sure. The kids would love it." I tilt my head as I think of the name. "Who's Felicity?"
Nora blinks at me. "Asher's sister."
The name lands flat in the middle of the kitchen table and just sits there.
"Right," I say, trying to get my pulse under control. "Of course."
Good Lord, why does this man keep coming up today?
"You met her at the barbecue. Tall, blonde, talks a mile a minute. Calls him Mash." Nora is already moving on, scrolling through her phone, oblivious to the way the room just narrowed around me. "Anyway, I owe you. I'll get you something nice from the trip."
I don’t answer.
His sister. His sister, who was at the barbecue in that same yard the afternoon I let her brother take me apart in a downstairs bathroom.
His world is a closed loop.
And I keep finding new edges of it pressed up against mine.
Nora's chair scrapes as she rises. "Be right back. Bathroom."
She goes, and I'm alone at the table, my mind doing what it’s done an unthinkable number of times in weeks, the thing I've forbidden and lost every argument with.
It goes to him. To the only time in months the pain behind my eye went fully, completely quiet.
To the relief of it. To how much I have berated myself for wanting that relief from him specifically, of all the people on earth.
Nate comes back through the back doors on a gust of cold air, hunting through a drawer.
My mind is scrambling, and the plan forms so quickly, I’d be impressed if it wasn’t so desperate, so conniving. I’ll hate myself later for it.
Nate finds what he needs, turning for the door, and I hear myself speak before I can evaluate the decision.
"Hey, can I borrow your phone? I left mine on the counter at home, and I want to text myself a reminder. School stuff for the kids.”
"Yeah, of course." He unlocks it and sets it in my hand, already moving toward the cold and the grill.
The ease of it hurts more than it should.
My pulse thunders, knowing exactly what I'm about to do.
I could stop.
But it's too late.
Too late to pretend I didn't want this.
My hands are steady, which is somehow worse. I open Nate’s contacts and scroll. It’s up near the top, making it all too easy. Asher. There he is, a saved number and nothing else. No photo, no nickname. I tap the contact and share it to my number.
In my purse, hooked over the back of the chair, my phone buzzes once against the leather.
I delete the text I just sent from his messages. The little gray bubble disappears like it was never there.
Then, because the excuse has to hold, I type the cover.
Field trip form. Due Monday. Backpack front pocket.
I send it to myself. Leave it sitting there at the top of the messages, innocent, exactly the thing I said I was doing.
My heart is going hard now, after the fact, the way it does when the danger's already passed.
I should feel sick.
I keep waiting to feel sick.
I don't though. Not quite.
Because the fear of Asher saying something, of this surfacing out of that closed loop and rippling outward—to Nora, to someone at church, to Melinda with Thomas's eyes—is bigger than the guilt. I tell myself that, and I almost believe it.
I lock the screen, setting the phone on the counter square to the edge for Nate to find.
I sit back down and discreetly look into my purse before Nora comes back. One new message from an unknown number, sits in a brand-new thread.
His number. In my phone. Burning a hole through any sanity I'll have for the rest of the evening.
A ridiculous rush moves through me before I can stop it.
The kids are asleep before we hit Millbrook, Eli's head tipped against the window, Sophie's borrowed book closed over one finger to hold her page.
I get them inside and get them down for bed. I stand in the hallway between their two doors for a minute longer than I need to, listening to the house breathe.
Then I get into bed and pick up the phone.
I stare at the message I sent to myself from Nate’s phone, as if I’m waiting for the random numbers to suddenly mean something.
And they do.
They shouldn’t. But they do.
An alert pops up at the top of the screen.
Declan.
Have a good evening. Hope this week is easier.
My throat dries up.
A whole gentle history of a man who shows up without being asked, who knows I hate loud noise, who lost everything and checks on me anyway.
The other is empty. A blank field under a number I stole. No history, no safe ground, just the man I keep thinking about despite my better judgment.
I stare at the ceiling.
Feel the pressure gathering behind my eye.
One thread is safe.
The other one isn’t.
My thumbs start moving across the screen.