TEN
SECRETS OF A SAINT
ARIA
The mirror lies. It tells me I look rested. Put together, almost normal. But the woman staring back knows better. She’s the kind who wakes up gasping at shadows and checks every window twice before turning on a light. She’s the woman who falls asleep with Isaiah’s mouth on her skin and wakes up alone in an empty motel room she shouldn’t be in to begin with. And she’s the one who keeps touching the ring under her blouse like it’s a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to her until now.
I paint lipstick over the bruise at the corner of my mouth. Foundation hides the shadows under my eyes. And a half-smile hides the fact that I spent the night checking my phone like an addict waiting for a dealer who stopped picking up.
I smooth my hair and straighten the blazer I didn’t iron. No one in this office has to know I slept four hours in a bed that wasn’t mine, in arms that aren’t mine, in a place I shouldn’t have been.
I whisper to my reflection, low and sharp. “Get it together.”
The reflection doesn’t believe me.
By the time I step out of my car, my legs feel hollow, but my expression is polished. People don’t look too closely when you wear heels and confidence like armor.
Leah meets me at the door with her latte and her judgment.
“You’re late again,” she singsongs. “Did someone keep you up?”
I roll my eyes. “The storm messed with my sleep.”
She lifts a brow. “Pretty sure the storm doesn’t leave hickey-shaped weather patterns.”
I push past her, heat climbing my throat.
Meetings blur into paperwork. Paperwork blurs into phone calls. Phone calls blur into me zoning out while staring at the same sentence for ten straight minutes.
Half the day I’m replaying last night. Isaiah’s hands on my body, the way he said my name like it cracked something inside him. The other half of the day, I’m pretending I’m not replaying last night.
By two p.m., even my coworkers stop pretending not to notice.
“You look tired.”
“You feeling okay?”
“Everything alright at home?”
I smile. I lie. I keep breathing. But every time I unclip a file, every time I blink, every time silence settles too long…
…I feel eyes on me.
The days blur. Sleep is a rumor I stopped believing in. Work piles on, motions, briefs, arguments, the noise of the courthouse swirling around me, and I wear professionalism like armor no one realizes is cracking at the edges.
Leah knows something’s wrong. She watches me over her desk with that “You’re a mess, but I’ll wait until you break to say anything” stare. She keeps quiet because she thinks heartbreak is safer than the truth.
If only.
By the fourth day, I’ve lost count of how many times I check the door, the lot outside the windows, the sidewalk. I keep expecting the world to shift, for something to snap back into place, for Isaiah to stop pretending distance keeps me safe.
Isaiah hasn’t called me once since the motel, and it hurts more than the storm ever did. He keeps his distance like loving me is a line he can’t afford to cross twice, and I pretend I’m fine even as the silence crawls under my skin.
I tell myself I’m not waiting on him. That I don’t check my notifications just to feel the spike of disappointment when his name isn't there. But every buzz of my phone makes my pulse jump like a spark catching dry tinder.
Instead, I catch the first black SUV that parks across the street, unmoving, windows tinted so dark I can’t make out anything inside.
I tell myself it’s a coincidence. A parent waiting for a kid. A delivery guy. Someone is on break. Then I see the plate number. It’s a Michigan plate with blue lettering, half covered by slush. I write it down in my notes app with shaking fingers.
