I pulled my hand away. “That’s not the point.”
“What about your parents? What about Simon and Olivia?”
“I’m not going to tell my parents.” I got to my feet and headed for the closet. “And I’m definitely not telling Simon and Olivia.”
It was the last thing any of them needed. They’d been through enough. This was my fight.
“So you want me to lie for you.”
Now she sounded pissed.
“It’s not going to come up,” I said, pulling blouses and dresses off hangers. I added them to the suitcase and went back to the closet for shoes. “I’m not disappearing. I’ll be right in town, I think. And I’ll still be able to see you and text and stuff.”
I wasn’t actually sure about any of that, but I didn’t get the vibe from the men known as the Butchers that they intended to keep me under lock and key. And they couldn’t really, because I needed to keep working to pay my share of the rent. I wasn’t going to leave Bailey in a lurch.
Silence settled between us as I dug through my closet, trying to choose shoes that would work for multiple outfits so I wouldn’t have to borrow a second suitcase from Bailey.
That would be a bridge too far.
When I turned around to add the shoes to my suitcase, Bailey was sitting on the bed with her arms folded over her chest and I had a flash of her at ten years old doing the same thing, except back then she‘d been the one with the crazy ideas and I'd been the voice of reason.
“I guess you’ve made up your mind then.”
I threw the shoes in my suitcase and sat next to her again. “I have. I’m sorry. I know this is weird. I love you and I don’t want you to be mad at me. I just… I can’t get past this. Not until he pays. June would want me to stop him.”
It wasn’t exactly true. June would have taken care of it herself. June had always taken care of me — of all of us — which was exactly why I had to take care of her now.
“I’m going to be all alone here.” Bailey sounded forlorn.
“I’ll be close though,” I said. “And I’ll still be paying my share of the rent. Who knows? Maybe you’ll like living alone.”
“I won’t,” she said, sulking.
I laughed a little. “You won’t have to tell me to get my crap off the coffee table and no one will eat your ice cream without asking permission.”
She exhaled. “True. Will I be able to come visit you?”
“I’m not sure.” There was a lot I didn’t know, which only reminded me how insane it had been to agree to the situation at all. “Probably?”
“Will you text me an address when you get there?” she asked. “Someone should know where you are.”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
That was a nonnegotiable. After what had happened to June, we were careful about keeping each other posted on our whereabouts. My parents and Simon and Olivia too. When the worst happened to one person in your life, you felt it breathing down your neck forever, a reminder that your life could change on a dime.
In the weeks before her murder, June had been hard to reach. She hadn’t texted, had sometimes taken days to answer texts. She’d been missing for three days when we finally realized something was wrong, that something had happened to her.
Those three days haunted me. I knew the exact date Chris had killed her from the trial, and I had nightmares of June buried in the woods, all alone, for the eight days it took to find her.
I closed my suitcase, then hurried around my room to gather my charging cables, computer, a couple books, and other necessities. I’d been inside the apartment for almost an hour and I didn’t trust Poe not to come looking for me.
That would make things worse. Right now Bailey could imagine the men who’d hunted me as semi-normal. But one look at Poe, with his animal-tooth necklace and inked skin, his bulging muscles and unreadable gaze, and she’d lock me in the house and call the police.
I looked around the room to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. “I think that’s it.”
She reached out her hand for the tote bag. “Let me get that for you.”
“I got it.” I leaned in to hug her. “Thank you.”
