The man who read to me knew who I was before I knew who he was.
The man I loved was filming himself having sex for money and calling it business.
The man who tied me to a chair, threatened me, and made me terrified for my life is the same man who bought me a book with a fake dedication and licked my tears from my face.
The girl who hit me was a sister trying to destroy the thing she blamed for destroying her.
I don't cry.
I want to.
The pressure is behind my eyes, in my throat, and sitting on my chest alongside the physical pain. But I don't cry because I have run out of the thing crying requires, like a fire that has burnedthrough everything available and gone out, not because it was extinguished, but because there was nothing left to consume.
I look at the three of them.
At Cody by the window with his eyes red and his jaw tight.
At Beckett at the foot of my bed with his elbows on his knees.
At Theo in the chair with the book in his hands.
I look at Theo.
At the book.
Something occurs to me.
"Give me the book," I say.
He looks at me and holds it out. I take it, feeling every muscle I move ache.
I open it, and something falls out.
I move the book to look at what it is.
It’s my pink Swarovski pendant on its delicate chain.
I look at it for a long time.
Then I look at Theo.
He's already looking at me.
He doesn't say anything. He just meets my eyes and lets me have it — the full weight of what it means, that he took it, that he kept it, that he has been carrying it for quite a while.
I pick it up and hold it in my palm.
And I feel it.
Not the pendant. Not the cold of the chain or the weight of the crystal. I feel the months of it. Every single morning, I looked for it and couldn't find it. Every time I convinced myself I'd misplaced it, lost it, left it somewhere careless. I grieved this. I genuinely grieved this.
I look at the window at the gray Seattle sky doing what it always does, and I think about the girl I was just three months ago. She was so certain. She loved so cleanly. She had a best friend, a boyfriend, and a life that made sense from every angle, and she thought she understood what it meant to be loved.
She didn't know anything.
I open my hand.
I look at the pendant one more time. At the chain pooled in my palm, and then I set it down on the hospital tray.
