"Rose."
"What?"
"It's Rose. Her middle name is Rose."
"Oh, really? Well, that's cute."
He tosses his duffle bag over his shoulder and then rests a hand on my cheek before pressing his lips to mine. "I'll miss you," he says, kissing me again. "I'll see you later, sexy."
"See you later."
I follow him out of the room and then head downstairs while he goes to knock on Elias's door. "Bro, let's go."
A couple of minutes later, the two of them get into Dax's car and leave.
I decide to give Saige a while to calm down before I knock on her door—after all, maybe she does have homework, and she wasted a good portion of the afternoon sitting naked in Dax's room for no reason.
But I can't stop checking the clock. I start getting fidgety again and head toward her bedroom. An hour is long enough, right?
"Saige? Can I come in?"
"Hold on," she says.
I hear her sniffle, shuffling around the room for a minute before she opens the door.
Her eyes are red. I can tell she's tried to clean it up, but her mascara has been running. She was definitely crying. "What's up?"
"Do you want to go out with me?"
"What do you mean?"
I shrug, stuffing my hands in my pockets. "There's a pub on Vine that I like. They'll be showing the Seahawks game—I'm a big fan. If we start walking now, we'll be there before halftime is over."
"Are you sure you want to go with me?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't I?"
"And you're not meeting other people there, right? It'll just be us?"
"What makes you think I like meeting groups of people? You must have me confused with someone else."
She nods. "Yeah. I want to go. Give me three minutes."
She meets me in the living room five minutes later, having fixed her mascara and changed her top. She's in the process of pulling on a jacket since it's finally getting colder—thank fuck—when she says, "Okay, let's go."
She exhales what sounds like relief when I pull the door closed behind us, locking it before following her out into the cool, October night.
"You have no idea how much I wanted to get out of that fucking house," she says.Yes, I do. I pay attention."God, I just…can't fucking breathe in there sometimes. I feel like I'm losing my mind. No offense."
"I'm not offended. You killed someone upstairs, and now it's your hostage bunker; I get it."
"Oh, my god. Don't say that."
"Which part?"
"All of it!"
"We need to cross here," I tell her, taking her hand in mine.
