CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Alex
Then
Three weeks later, I stood in the bathroom of my apartment and stared at a thin pink line.
I sat on the edge of the tub.
The tile was cold.
I looked at the line for a long time. As though giving it enough attention might cause it to change its mind.
It didn’t.
I thought about the hotel room. The ceiling I didn’t recognize. Joshua seated across the room with his jacket on and his shoes on and his practiced expression.
Nothing happened, he’d said.
I turned the test over in my hands.
My first call was to Martina. She answered on the second ring. She listened without interrupting, which was the only kindness I needed and the one she always knew to offer.
When I finished, she was quiet.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Does Riley know?”
“No.”
“Alex—”
“I can’t tell him,” I said. “I can’t walk into his house and tell him that I went to California and woke up in a hotel room I don’t remember entering and now I’m—” I stopped. “He’ll think I cheated.”
“He won’t think that.”
“He might.”
“He loves you,” she said.
“I know he does.” I pressed the heel of my hand against my eye. “That doesn’t make this easier. It makes it harder.”
She said nothing to that. Because she knew I was right.
“I need time,” I said. “To think.”
“How much time do you have?”
I looked at the test. “Not as much as I’d like.”
Outside, the exhaust note from a motorcycle passing on the street below faded to nothing.
I sucked in a jagged breath. “I’ll figure it out.”
Martina said nothing.
We both knew the statement was more hope than plan.
I didn’t figure it out.
What I did was carry it. Quietly. The way I carried most things I didn’t know what to do with. I packed it down and put it somewhere manageable and went about the days as though nothing had shifted.
I was good at that. I’d had practice.
Riley noticed something was off on the third day.
We were in his kitchen. I was sitting on the counter the way I always did, watching him move around the space. He handed me a root beer without being asked. He glanced at me.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said.
He gave me the long look. The one that said he knew the difference between okay and fine.
“Tired,” I added. “From the trip.”
He accepted that. But I caught him watching me twice more before the evening was over, and both times he looked away when I looked back.
He knew something was wrong.
He was waiting for me to tell him what.
That was the worst part. Not the test. Not the hotel room. Not the fog I couldn’t fully account for.
The fact that Riley was giving me room to come to him.
And I was using that room to hide.