Page 31 of Rent an Enforcer

“I know.” I touch my forehead to hers and close my eyes, letting the cold weight in my chest begin to dissolve. Some things take longer than a morning to fix, but this is a start. “I love you.”

She lets out a breath that sounds like it’s been trapped for days. Maybe longer than that. “Say it again?”

“I love you.”

“Again?”

“Stella.”

“I could hear it all day, I really could.” She giggles. “Just one more time. For me?”

Opening my eyes, I pull my head back far enough to stare into hers. “I love you.” I speak slowly, enunciating every word. “And you’re not leaving.”

There’s no time to wonder why she’s frowning before she lets me know. “I know I’m not leaving,” she murmurs, tipping her head to the side. “I told you I’m not leaving. Are you just now getting that? Because I’m pretty sure I was clear about it.”

All I can do is kiss her. Her lips are salty from the tears she couldn’t blink back. For a few minutes, the only sound in the house is us and Socks, sighing on his cushion like he saw this coming from the beginning and is getting tired of being right all the time.

EPILOGUE

STELLA

He won’t tell me where we’re going. This is annoying for several reasons. The first being I can’t check the weather conditions for a destination I don’t know. The second, I’ve asked fourteen times, and he’s answered exactly zero of them.

And I counted, too. Fourteen times. No answers. Just that half-smile as he stares straight ahead through the windshield while the highway stretches out in front of us.

“Is it much further?” I try. Maybe if I’m indirect, he’ll work with me.

No such luck. “You already tried that one.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“Because it would ruin the surprise.”

Unreal. “You know I don’t like surprises. They’re on the list. Not the main list, but the secondary one. The annex.”

“You have an annex now?” He snorts.

“I always have. It’s for things that aren’t full phobias but still make me uncomfortable.” I count them off on my fingers. “Surprises. People who whisper for no reason—I can’t even tell you how that ticks me off. Corn mazes⁠—”

“Corn mazes?” he asks. His eyes cut my way as he smirks.

“You can’t see over the walls. You just have to trust that the corn isn’t plotting something.”

“Totally reasonable.” He might shake his head, but I see the smile he’s still trying to fight. He wears it more and more lately. Like a piece of clothing he’s breaking in—a pair of shoes or a new hat.

The drive takes about an hour. I spend it watching the landscape change. Suburbs become highway, which becomes smaller roads lined with dune grass and the sort of low, scrubby brush that only grows near the coast. I smell it before I see it. Salt and something mineral underneath it, blowing through the vents. My hands tighten in my lap because I know where we’re going now. My body knows before my brain can confirm it.

He’s taking me to the ocean.

I haven’t been to the beach since I was five years old. Since the day Mom and Dad packed a cooler and drove to the shore, and Mom walked ahead with her sandals in one hand and her red hair blowing sideways.

All this time, I’ve been painting the waves. I’ve painted it from every angle, in every shade. I’ve never once been back to see it in person, though. Painting it from memory instead of facing it was safer.

Now we pull into a small gravel lot at the end of a road that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere else. There are no other cars. The dunes rise up on either side, and beyond them I can hear it. The ocean, steady and enormous. Totally indifferent to the fact that I am terrified.

He kills the engine and looks my way. “You don’t have to do this,” he murmurs. “But I thought... maybe I could help you face it.”

I look down at my hands. Big surprise. They’re shaking. “This is a lot,” I whisper. But then again, my hands shook in the alley, didn’t they? I still pulled the trigger. “What’s the wind?”