After a few tense moments, he releases me all at once, like I’ve burnt him. “What?”
I stay where I am, back to him as I try to breathe. “I have to process all this—away from you. I’m going to see Rich, my friend, because that’s what I need right now.”
“If you go there, we’re done.”
I get in the backseat of the cab and shut the door, but the passenger’s side window is open.
“I can forgive you anything,” Finn says, “the scene you just made, overdrinking when I warned you not to, telling the people who hired me to do a job something so personal about us. But not this.”
I swipe my tears away. On some level, now that the thrill of our relationship is wearing off, I’m sure this is what he wants. But Finn’s too softhearted to leave someone who isn’t stable, someone who needs him like I do. Someone who’s obsessed with him. Sometimes he needs a push. This is best for both of us.
I give the driver Rich’s address.
30
Rich’s doorman looks suspicious as I do my best not to stumble across the apartment building’s lobby, but he lets me by with a wave. After all, even if I’ve been away a few months, I did spend two years coming in and out of this building.
I pound on Rich’s door until he yells from the other side, “All right, all right. Jesus. Who is it?”
“Me.”
The deadbolt slides open, and Rich peeks out, squinting. He looks less surprised to find me drunk on his doorstep in the middle of the night than I would’ve guessed. “Come in, Halston.”
“I need a place to crash.”
“I already said come in.” He opens the door wider. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, and I’m sleeping on the couch.”
He surrenders with both palms up and leads me into the kitchen. “You know where the linens are. I’ll get you some water.”
“I’m drunk.”
“No shit.”
“I’m sorry.” I steady myself on the kitchen island as he gets a glass from a cupboard. “I know you hate that.”
“Actually . . . no. In a way, I’m kind of, I guess, glad.”
Did he sayglad? “Huh?”
He glances up from under his lashes as he pours me filtered water. “I’ve been waiting for this to happen, and I’d hoped you’d come here when it did. Where you feel safe.”
Is that true? Did I come crawling back here knowing the most dangerous feeling I might experience is tedium or Rich’s standard-grade condescension? “You’re not mad?”
“No.” He brings me the glass, stopping for Tylenol from a medicine drawer. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really. I just want to sleep.”
“Does it have to do with him? Is it over?”
I gulp down water and pills, looking at Rich over the rim of the glass. It doesn’t feel over—how could it be? How could all that love and passion just vanish into thin air? Finn said it, though. If I left, that was it. Defying Finn is less exhilarating now, less righteous, than it was twenty minutes ago.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Rich doesn’t need to know any of that. “Not over.”
He sighs on his way to the linen closet. “What’s with the bag?”
I almost forgot. I open the flap of Finn’s bag, but there’s nothing in there. Finn still has his camera. And the account, and anything that means something to me. My chest aches, also empty. “It’s his.”
