I press my fingers to my lips again at a red light.
The way he said,you'll see.
Not a promise. Not a threat. Something in between that feels like both.
I think about his face when I mentioned his mother. The way it went briefly, completely unguarded — a flash of somethingreal underneath all that control, there and gone so fast I almost missed it.
I didn't miss it.
I don't miss things the way I used to.
The light changes. I drive.
Sunday, I told him. Barnes and Noble on Sunday.
I have one day between now and Saturday. One day before Cody's father's house, and whatever that evening is going to require from me. One day before I have to be someone's girlfriend again in the most deliberate and dangerous way I've been asked to be it yet.
And then Sunday.
I touch my cheek.
I shouldn't go.
I drive home through the gray Seattle evening. I don't turn the radio on, and I don't call anyone. I sit with everything that just happened in the last hour — the job, the apron, the alley, his mouth, his hand at my throat, his tongue on my tears — and I let it be complicated.
I would meet you at the edge of the earth every day if you asked me to.
Chapter 40: Adela
Iwakeupthinkingabout his mouth.
That's the first thing. Before the alarm, before the gray Seattle light pressing through my curtains, before I remember what day it is or what day tomorrow is — his mouth. The cold of it and then the warmth. The pressure of his hand on my throat. The way he looked at my tears like they were something he was entitled to.
I press my fingers to my lips in the dark.
Still mine. Still just mine. Nothing has changed except everything has changed, and I have approximately forty-eight hours before I have to sit across from Cody at his father's dinner table and perform devoted girlfriend well enough to survive whatever that evening actually is.
I get up and get ready for the day.
The library is quiet at eight in the morning.
I go because I told myself I wouldn't, and then I went anyway, which seems to be a pattern I'm developing. Third floor. Political science section. I round the last shelf and stop.
Someone is in my chair.
Notmychair. I don't have a chair; I have never had a chair. It is a library carrel that belongs to the university, and anyone can sit there. I know this. I am still standing here experiencing something unreasonable about the fact that someone else is in it.
She looks up.
She has dark hair, a good coat, and the confidence of someone who has always been comfortable taking up space. She's looking at me with an expression that appears friendly.
"Sorry," I say automatically. "It’s usually empty in here, and I’ve always sat there."
"Oh god, I'm so sorry." She starts gathering her things immediately, warm and apologetic. "I didn't know. Here—"
"Oh, no, it's fine." I wave it off because it is fine, objectively, even if something in me is unreasonably territorial about a silly library spot. "I can sit somewhere else."
“Are you sure?”
