Page 18 of My Girl to Take

But I’ve just made an appointment four days out in a room I’m supposed to be leaving.

Chapter Four

Kiera

I lie to my stepfather at seven fifteen on a Friday evening, and it’s the first time in my life.

He’s in the chair by the window, which is a good sign. There’s color in his face, which is a better one. He looks up when I come in with my coat over my arm.

“You’re going out.”

“Dinner with Priya. From the fund side. She’s been asking for months.”

“Good. You don’t go out.” He turns a page. “Take the car. It’s dark.”

“I will.”

And that’s all of it. He doesn’t look up again. I stand in the doorway a second longer than I need to, holding my coat. He took it the way he takes everything I tell him. Completely.

That’s what lands. Not the lie. How easy it was, and how much it means to be trusted like that.

Four days.

Logan gave me four days, and four days turned out to be a very long time. On Tuesday, I decided not to go. Wednesday, I decided to go but changed my mind on the drive home. Thursday, I started a message that said I don’t think I. I deleted it, then regretted it for twenty minutes.

Because that’s what he did to me. If he had taken me on that couch on Tuesday, I’d have let him, and I’d have been fine. It would have been the kind of thing that happens to a person. Instead he put four days between us and handed me the whole weight of it.

You get to be sure.

I’m twenty-five years old, and no one has ever made me be sure of anything. My mother decided I’d be raised by a nanny. Garth decided I’d have his name behind me at work. Every man who ever looked at me twice decided, somewhere around the second look, that I’d be too much effort.

Logan put his hand on my face on Tuesday, took it away, and told me to come back if I meant it.

I have never been so furious with anyone.

I’m eleven minutes early.

***

He opens the door, and the room behind him is not the room I was in on Tuesday.

It isn’t romantic. There are no candles, thank God. But the table is clear, and the laptop is gone. The shirts that were over the chair are gone, and there’s a bottle open on the counter with two glasses. The bed I glimpse through the bedroom door has been made properly.

He prepared. He stood in this room this afternoon and prepared for me to come.

That undoes me more thoroughly than anything he did with his hands.

“You came.”

“You said eight.”

“You’re early.”

“I’m aware.”

Something moves at the corner of his mouth. He steps back, takes my coat off my shoulders, and hangs it up. It just seems so ordinary.

“Wine?”