Chapter 44 Adela
I make it two blocks before I have to pull over.
Not because I'm crying. I'm not crying. I pull over because my hands are shaking on the wheel, and I've been in enough near-misses in Seattle rain to know that trembling hands on a wheel is how people end up in ditches.
I put it in park and sit.
The street outside is empty and wet. I look at my hands in my lap and wait for them to stop doing the thing they're doing.
You're mine.
The way he said it. Not a question. Not even really a statement.
Just a fact he was depositing into the room before I left, the same way he deposits all his facts — quietly, with complete certainty, in a tone that doesn't leave space for argument because it never occurred to him that argument was an option.
I press my fingers against my lips.
His mouth. The fire. The white cheddar popcorn.
And then his hand.
I close my eyes.
My pulse is still doing something it shouldn't be doing.
My body is not in sync with my mind on the subject of Cody Ravenshaw, and I resent that so fucking much.
I know what he is. I know what he did. I have sat in a chair tied up in the dark and watched the evidence of what he is play out on a screen.
I know what he did. What he looks like while doing it, and I still kissed him back.
Not all the way. Not completely. He felt the hesitation, but that doesn’t matter. I still kissed him and played the role. And for what?
Maybe I should dump his ass and leave him in the past.
You’re mine.
No. I open my eyes.
I am not anyone’s.
The street is still empty. My hands are steadier. I look at the rain on the windshield, and I think about what he said before the other thing. Before you're mine.
Whatever you know. Whatever you found out. It's not what you think.
I sit with that.
It's not what you think.
He said it like he knows what I think. Like he knows I found something, or I know something I shouldn’t.
He said it in the specific tone of someone managing a narrative — not denying, not confirming, just redirecting, introducing doubt, and planting a seed that will grow in the dark while I'm not looking.
It's not what you think.
What do I think?
I think I watched videos of him with other women on a laptop that was in my hands and is now somewhere I don’t know.
I think a camera was in my bathroom in a gift he gave me.
I think masked men broke into my room and tied me to a chair.
I think Beckett was one of them, and he's been in my orbit ever since.
I think a man in a library has been writing back to me in the margins for weeks, and yesterday he kissed me in a car, licked my tears from my cheek, and said, "This isn't a mistake, you'll see. "
I think the lot near the rink is not where Cody left his car that night.
And his face when I told him that's where I found it—
I saw it.
The crack. Half a second of something unguarded moving across his face before he pulled it back. He's exceptional at control, and he lost it for half a second. I was looking directly at him when he did.
He didn't drive to the rink that night.
So who did?
I put my car in drive.
I drive.
The campus is quiet at this hour.
I park in the Elm Hall lot and sit for a moment before going in.
The rain has softened to the Seattle mist that isn't quite rain and isn't quite not — the kind that accumulates on your coat without you noticing until you're soaked.
I look up at the building. Fifth floor. My window dark because I left before dark and haven't been back.
My phone buzzes.
Cody: Get home safe.
Three words. Warm. Normal. The text a boyfriend sends when his girlfriend leaves for the night. I look at it for a long moment.
I type back: Just got in. Thank you for tonight.
I stare at what I wrote.
Thank you for tonight.
I’m still playing the game. I need time to think about how to break things off.
My room is cold.
I didn't leave the heat on because I forgot, and now I'm standing in my coat in a cold room at eleven at night with Cody's smell still on my clothes and his voice still in my head.
You're mine.
I take my coat off and hang it up.
I sit on the edge of my bed.
I should call Maeve. I told her I would. I pick up my phone, look at her name, and put it back down because calling Maeve means continuing this act. I don’t have the energy for that.
I lie back on my bed, still in my going-to-Cody's outfit, and look at the ceiling.
He loves me.
That's the thing I keep arriving at, keep wanting to move past, but can't. Whatever else is true — the videos, the camera, the controlled performance of him — underneath it, he loves me in whatever way Cody Ravenshaw is capable of loving anything.
I felt it tonight. In the fire and the popcorn and the string lights and the way he said I'm not ready for you to leave and meant it.
He loves me, and he surveilled me.
He loves me, and he had a camera in my bathroom.
He loves me, and his face cracked for half a second when I told him where I found his car, and he still won't tell me whose house is on Nob Hill.
Both things are true, and I don't know what to do with that except lie on my bed, look at the ceiling, and feel it.
I turn my head and look at the window.
The mist against the glass. The orange glow of the parking lot below.
Tomorrow is Sunday.
The thought arrives quietly and sits in my chest in a completely different register from everything else that's been sitting there tonight. Not dread.
Just — warmth.
Barnes and Noble when they open.
I press my fingers to my lips.
Not Cody's kiss this time. The other one. The cold that became warm, and the hand at my throat with someone who didn’t ask permission because he's decided he didn’t need to. And how I let him because somewhere between the library and the alley I stopped being able to pretend I didn't want to.
This isn't a mistake. You'll see.
I stare at the ceiling.
What the hell am I doing?
I have a boyfriend. I have a boyfriend who just held me in front of a fire and kissed me. He made sure to mention that I’m his, but all I could think about was the person who would be at Barnes and Noble in approximately eight hours.
I am a terrible person.
I sit up.
I am not a terrible person. I am a person in an impossible situation that was built around me by people who made decisions I didn't consent to, and I am doing the best I can with the information I have and the feelings I have.
The three men who are somehow all tangled up in my life in ways I couldn't have predicted when I packed one suitcase and transferred to UW Seattle for love.
I was so certain about that love.
I exhale.
I get up and wash my face, taking off my makeup. I change into something that doesn't smell like Cody's house, and I feel incrementally better with each thing I do. I have learned that doing things is always better than not doing things, more than I have in my entire life before Cody’s incident.
I don't sleep well, but I sleep.
The alarm goes off at seven forty-five, and I lie there for three seconds doing the calculation — Barnes and Noble opens at nine, it's twenty minutes away, I need time to shower — and then I'm wide awake.
I shower and let myself feel the nervousness that isn't dread. The want that isn't guilt, or isn't only guilt. How every meeting in the library felt electric, and this feels like I’ve purposely put a shock collar around my neck and gave him the remote.
I stand in front of my closet, trying to figure out what to wear today. I need comfort, but something that looks good too. I settle with my favorite barrel jeans and a knit long-sleeve with a puffy vest and my Uggs.
I look at myself in the mirror. I’m simply me.
I pick up my bag and my keys, and I think about Cody's text from last night — get home safe — and I think about the crack in his face. I think about all of it for exactly thirty seconds, and then my mind jumps to Theo, and everything about Cody disappears.
The city is quiet on a Sunday morning, and I love it. No one’s really out. There’s barely any traffic as I drive to the Barnes and Noble across the city.
My nerves are high as the radio plays low.
Because I chose this.
I didn’t choose Beckett; he came to me. I didn’t choose Cody; he pursued me from the very beginning.
Theo is another story. I met him organically in the library while I was studying, and then accidentally watched his lecture. And the snowball kept rolling from there. It feels liberating to have something like this.
Knowing that at least I chose this one makes me feel good.
I pull into the Barnes and Noble parking lot at eight fifty-seven.
I sit in the car, looking around the parking lot and then at the entrance. The lights are on inside, staff moving behind the glass, the ordinary Sunday morning of a bookstore opening its doors.
My heart is doing the thing again.
I get out of the car when I realize that the staff isn’t unlocking the doors. Maybe they’re already unlocked.
The cold hits me immediately, the Sunday morning air sharper than yesterday, carrying the musty smell of Seattle after rain. I pull my coat tighter and walk toward the entrance, and I am almost at the door when someone opens it for me.
“Thank you,” I mutter, walking in and shivering.
“You’re welcome,” he says, and when I turn, I see that it’s him.
Theo.
He takes in my face.
I look at his.
And something that has been wound tight in my chest since completely releases.
"You're early," I say.
"You're late," he says.
"It's eight fifty-eight."
"They open at nine. I've been here since eight forty-five." He holds the second door wider. "Are you coming in?"
I walk through the door he's holding.