Chapter 9
Chapter nine
Lucy
Warrick’s headlights stayed two car lengths behind me the whole way.
And the stupid, ridiculous, infuriating thing was that having him behind me quieted something in my chest that I hadn’t been able to quiet on my own since Andrew’s voice had said my name.
I pulled into my building’s lot as Warrick parked across the street.
I got out of the car. Keys between my fingers, the long one between index and middle.
Muscle memory. Andrew’s gift that kept on giving.
The apartment was quiet. Felony met me at the door with a headbutt to my ankle and a yowl that said, “Where the hell have you been? The food situation is unconscionable.”
I packed like I was robbing the place. Duffel bag, change of clothes, phone charger, cat food, and Felony. She went into the carrier with the enthusiasm of a prisoner being transferred to a worse facility.
Seven minutes. In and out.
Warrick’s SUV was still across the street. I loaded Felony into the backseat and pulled out of the lot. Two seconds later, his headlights came on behind me.
When I got to Dani’s building, Warrick parked outside.
He didn’t leave, even when I walked in the front door.
Dani opened the door before I knocked. Bathrobe, hair in a scrunchie, glass of wine in one hand.
She took one look at me, then grabbed the cat carrier out of my hand, set it on the floor, and hugged me.
She didn’t say anything, just hugged me.
And that was when my brain finally decided it was done, because I started crying into her shoulder in a way I hadn’t cried since Dad died.
She held on until I stopped. Then she walked me to the couch, handed me her wine, and sat down across from me.
“Okay,” she said. “Start wherever. I’ve got all night.”
I told Dani everything.
She listened the way she always did—wine in one hand, legs folded under her, face open. She didn’t interrupt. She let me get through all of it: the parking lot, the boyfriend lie, Warrick following me here. Then I took a breath.
“I told Warrick.”
Her wine stopped halfway to her mouth.
“Told him what?”
“All of it.”
She put her glass down very carefully, as if it were made of something expensive.
“Luce.”
“I know.”
“You haven’t told anyone except the doctors and me.”
“I know.”
“But you told him?”
“In a parking lot. After knowing him for less than a week. Yes. I’m aware of how it sounds.”
She looked at me for a long moment, and then she scooted across the couch and put her arm around me.
“That is huge,” she said into my hair. “Do you understand how huge that is? I have been waiting months for you to be able to say any of it to anyone who wasn’t me, and tonight you just handed it to a man you barely know.”
“I know.”
“And what did he do?”
“He listened. And then he told me I wasn’t stupid for staying with Andrew. That all the blame belonged to Andrew. Not me.”
“Gotta say I’m liking this hot PI more and more,” she said quietly.
I leaned my head against hers.
“He makes me feel safe, Dani.”
“I’m getting that.”
“And the pull I feel toward him … It’s not normal. I look at him and my whole body just …” I gestured uselessly at the air. “I’ve never felt like this. Not with anyone.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? Okay, what?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me I’m being an idiot. Tell me this is how it started with Andrew.”
She pulled back so she could look at me.
“Do you remember your green dress?”
I blinked. “What?”
“The green dress. You used to love wearing it. You looked incredible in that dress. Then you wore it to my birthday, and Andrew spent the whole night telling you it was pulling across the back, and it made you look weird. And by the middle of the party, you’d put your jacket on, and you never wore it again. ”
I hadn’t thought about that dress in over a year. She was right. I’d loved that dress.
“That’s what Andrew did. He’d find something you loved and make you feel stupid for loving it. Small things, every day, until you couldn’t tell his voice from yours.” She held my eyes. “You’d recognize it now, if Warrick tried to pull the same shit. But I got a feeling he’s not that kind of guy.”
“It’s just … my gut trusted Andrew.”
“Your gut trusted Andrew when you were twenty-one and drowning and alone, and your dad had just died. Your gut is not that gut anymore, Luce.”
I welled up again. “You’re the best; you know that, right?”
“Fuck, yeah, I know. Besides, if we’re wrong about him, I’m not just bringing the bat. I’m bringing Cleopatra. She’s been on antibiotics for two weeks, and she has a lot of unresolved anger about it.”
Felony spent the night walking across my face at regular intervals, which I chose to interpret as vigilance rather than spite, though with Felony, the line was never clear. By morning, I could hold a coffee cup without my hands shaking, which I counted as a win.
Dani made pancakes. Badly. We ate them anyway.
“You don’t have to go back,” she said, around a mouthful. “Stay another night. Stay the week. I’ve got a spare room, and I’ve been told I’m an absolute delight to live with.”
“By who?”
“By Freddie.”
I glanced at the bowl on her kitchen counter. “Your goldfish?”
“Yes. He’s told me frequently.”
“I’m going home.”
“Luce—”
“I have to. I can’t let him keep me out of my own apartment.
If he does, he wins.” I set my fork down.
I’d been thinking about this all night, in the gaps between Felony’s face-walks and the ceiling I couldn’t stop staring at.
I wouldn’t let Andrew chase me out of my apartment.
That apartment was the first place in my life that had been entirely mine.
If Andrew took that from me, he took the proof that I could build something without him.
Dani hesitated, clearly wanting to argue, but she must have seen the look on my face because she threw up her hands in surrender. “Fine. But you call me anytime, Luce. You get any hint of that dickhead being around, and you call me. Promise?”
I smiled. “Promise.”
I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened my door.
For a second, my brain refused to process it.
My apartment looked like it did every morning—couch, coffee table, the throw blanket Felony had clawed into submission folded on the arm of the chair.
Except my plants were on the floor, the terracotta pots shattered into pieces on the hardwood, soil spread out in dark smears.
The plants had been torn up by the roots and thrown.
The little pothos I’d been nursing back from near-death; the spider plant my grandmother had given me a cutting of twelve years ago, the one I’d carried through four moves; even the rosemary I’d bought at the farmers’ market because I’d wanted to be the kind of person who cooked with fresh herbs.
My knees went. I sat down hard on the floor with Felony’s carrier beside me. She started yowling, sensing something was wrong.
I looked at the coffee table. The spine of my anatomy textbook had been broken, pages torn out in fistfuls, the diagrams I’d highlighted ripped down the middle and scattered across the table like confetti. On top of the wreckage was my highlighter. Pink. Uncapped. The tip broken off.
Nothing else was touched.
The TV was still on the wall. My laptop was on the kitchen counter where I’d left it. Just the plants. And the textbook.
He’d been in my apartment.
Felony was still yowling.
I opened the carrier with hands that didn’t feel like mine. She came out, went straight into my lap, and pressed her hot little body against my chest. I put my arms around her and sat there. And that’s when a thought hit me like cold water.
What if Andrew is still here?
My apartment was small. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, the closet by the front door. Four places a person could be. I needed to check. I needed to stand up and walk through my own home and make sure I was alone in it.
I put Felony down. She meowed in protest. I stood up, looked around for something, anything, and picked up the heaviest thing within reach, which turned out to be the ceramic butter dish Dani had bought me as a housewarming gift. It had a highland cow on the lid.
I was going to clear my apartment with a cow.
I stifled a giggle, knowing it was just nervousness and fear.
Bedroom first. I pushed the door open with my foot.
Empty. Under the bed was nothing but dust and a hair tie I’d been looking for since March.
Bathroom. I pulled back the shower curtain in one motion.
Empty. Kitchen. Nobody behind the counter.
Closet by the front door—coats, boots, the vacuum I kept meaning to use more often.
Empty. All of it.
I put the butter dish down on the counter and pulled out my phone.
I should call the police. I knew that. That was the correct, responsible thing to do.
But what would I say, exactly? Nothing was stolen.
The door wasn’t forced. A woman calling to report smashed houseplants and a ruined textbook.
I could already hear the dispatcher’s tone when they asked, “Did you say there was no sign of forced entry, ma’am?
And nothing was stolen?” My answer of “No, but I have a really strong feeling of who it was,” was probably not going to be taken seriously.
I didn’t want to make a fuss. That was the bones of it. Andrew had trained me to believe my fear was always slightly too much, and here I was still asking myself whether I was overreacting. Whether smashed plants and a torn textbook were worth someone’s time. Whether I was worth someone’s time.
Day or night, Warrick had said.
He answered on the first ring.
“Lucy.”
“Andrew was in my apartment.”
“Are you there now?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone else there?”
“No. I checked.”
A pause.
“Is the door locked behind you?”
“I—No. No, I just came in. I—”
“Lock it now. Stay inside. I’m two minutes out.”
“Okay.”
“Lucy.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m coming. Don’t move.”
The line went dead.
I picked up Felony, walked to the door, and turned the deadbolt. Then I slid down the wall beside it and sat there with my cat on my chest while I waited for the sound of his truck.