She steps back.
"Don't." Her voice cracks. Please don't."
She turns. She walks out. Her footsteps down the hall, uneven, quick, the sound of someone who is holding it together for exactly as long as it takes to get behind a closed door.
The office holds the three of us.
Jace sits down on the edge of Maya's desk. Slowly, like his legs decided for him.
Owen hasn't moved. His eyes are on the check on the desk. His hands are on the armrests of his chair and his knuckles are white.
I stand where she left me. In the middle of the room. My hands are at my sides. I am not holding anything. There is nothing to hold. There is no task to complete. There is no situation to assess and manage and fix.
There is only a closed door.
31
MAYA
I fold a sweater and press it flat against the top of the bed. My hands are not cooperating. Not with the dramatic tremor of a woman in crisis. I did that already, in the dark, for hours, until my face swelled and my ribs ached from the effort of keeping the sound inside my chest. This is what comes after. The fine, persistent vibration of a body running on nothing.
A shirt. Two pairs of jeans. Underwear. The inventory of departure, the same motions I made in the Los Angeles apartment when the walls closed in and every notification was another piece of me distributed to strangers. I packed that apartment with the same numb efficiency. Hands moving. Brain offline.
But in Los Angeles I was running from destruction.
This is running from the only thing that has ever felt like repair.
My hands stop on the jeans. Fingers pressed into denim, the stillness spreading up through my wrists, my forearms, myshoulders, until I am standing in the center of a room holding a pair of jeans and staring at a wall.
I love them.
All three of them. Differently, specifically, with a completeness that terrifies me because the last time I thought I loved someone I handed him the tools to destroy my life.
These men are not Daniel.
I know this.
And I am leaving them anyway.
I can feel it. Spreading Contaminating. Like an oil spill, sticking to everything if I don’t contain it.
I try to inhale. My ribs are trying to expand against a chest that has decided to contract.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Both palms flat on the mattress. The texture of the cotton weave against my skin.
The air comes in. Not enough. But some.
I stand. Go back organizing my things to leave. The motions are jerky, imprecise, but the movement gives my body something to do other than fail at breathing.
A knock. "Maya." Jace's voice. Low, rough, stripped of every layer of charm.
A pause. I hear him swallow.
"I made you something to eat. I'll leave it by the door."
I'm across the room before the decision finishes forming. Hand on the knob. Turning. Pulling.
He's there.
