You’re mine.
No. I open my eyes.
I am not anyone’s.
The street is still empty. My hands are steadier. I look at the rain on the windshield, and I think about what he said before the other thing. Before you're mine.
Whatever you know. Whatever you found out. It's not what you think.
I sit with that.
It's not what you think.
He said it like he knows what I think. Like he knows I found something, or I know something I shouldn’t. He said it in the specific tone of someone managing a narrative — not denying, not confirming, just redirecting, introducing doubt, and planting a seed that will grow in the dark while I'm not looking.
It's not what you think.
What do I think?
I think I watched videos of him with other women on a laptop that was in my hands and is now somewhere I don’t know. I think a camera was in my bathroom in a gift he gave me. I thinkmasked men broke into my room and tied me to a chair. I think Beckett was one of them, and he's been in my orbit ever since. I think a man in a library has been writing back to me in the margins for weeks, and yesterday he kissed me in a car, licked my tears from my cheek, and said, "This isn't a mistake, you'll see."
I think the lot near the rink is not where Cody left his car that night.
And his face when I told him that's where I found it—
I saw it.
The crack. Half a second of something unguarded moving across his face before he pulled it back. He's exceptional at control, and he lost it for half a second. I was looking directly at him when he did.
He didn't drive to the rink that night.
So who did?
I put my car in drive.
I drive.
The campus is quiet at this hour.
I park in the Elm Hall lot and sit for a moment before going in. The rain has softened to the Seattle mist that isn't quite rain and isn't quite not — the kind that accumulates on your coat without you noticing until you're soaked. I look up at the building. Fifth floor. My window dark because I left before dark and haven't been back.
My phone buzzes.
Cody: Get home safe.
Three words. Warm. Normal. The text a boyfriend sends when his girlfriend leaves for the night. I look at it for a long moment.
I type back: Just got in. Thank you for tonight.
I stare at what I wrote.
Thank you for tonight.
I’m still playing the game. I need time to think about how to break things off.
My room is cold.
I didn't leave the heat on because I forgot, and now I'm standing in my coat in a cold room at eleven at night with Cody's smell still on my clothes and his voice still in my head.
