A book. She's meeting someone over a book. A tall, dark, serious man who isn't on the team, and she's leaving him notes. He's taking things that belong to her, and she's going to him in libraries. And she hesitated when I kissed her. Her pulse was racing under my hand, and it wasn't because of me.
The front door closes downstairs, so I walk to the window.
Her Range Rover is in the driveway right where she left it. She doesn't look up at my window. She never looks back — that's always been one of her things, the forward momentum of her, the way she moves toward the next thing without checking what she's leaving.
She doesn't know I'm watching.
She pulls down the drive.
Through the gate.
And she’s gone for the night.
I stand at the window for a moment after the taillights disappear, and I think about the hesitation. About the backbone that wasn't there a month ago and is very much there now.
Someone built that in her while I was gone.
I pick up my phone.
It rings once.
Twice.
The line opens.
“Cody?”
"Hello, Silas."
Chapter 44: Adela
Imakeittwoblocks before I have to pull over.
Not because I'm crying. I'm not crying. I pull over because my hands are shaking on the wheel, and I've been in enough near-misses in Seattle rain to know that trembling hands on a wheel is how people end up in ditches.
I put it in park and sit.
The street outside is empty and wet. I look at my hands in my lap and wait for them to stop doing the thing they're doing.
You're mine.
The way he said it. Not a question. Not even really a statement. Just a fact he was depositing into the room before I left, the sameway he deposits all his facts — quietly, with complete certainty, in a tone that doesn't leave space for argument because it never occurred to him that argument was an option.
I press my fingers against my lips.
His mouth. The fire. The white cheddar popcorn.
And then his hand.
I close my eyes.
My pulse is still doing something it shouldn't be doing. My body is not in sync with my mind on the subject of Cody Ravenshaw, and I resent that so fucking much. I know what he is. I know what he did. I have sat in a chair tied up in the dark and watched the evidence of what he is play out on a screen.
I know what he did. What he looks like while doing it, and I still kissed him back.
Not all the way. Not completely. He felt the hesitation, but that doesn’t matter. I still kissed him and played the role. And for what?
Maybe I should dump his ass and leave him in the past.
