I napped too long and was in a hurry to transform into Emerald before my Thursday night shift. I was fumbling with my hair when he knocked on my door. Flat iron still in hand, I opened it.
“Okay, I have a super last minute, crazy favor to ask you,” Cash blurted. His hands were together in front of him as if in prayer, which he would need a lot of if he wanted anything from me. It had been three weeks since our last intentional interaction. He had chosen to sit in the hall and avoid eye contact or disappear entirely when Dylan’s sock was tied around their doorknob. Now, here he was at my door, asking for help. I wasn’t going to make this easy.
I smirked as I set the flat iron down and twisted up a portion of my hair. “Is it the kind of favor I already offered you?”
Cash sucked in his breath. Exhaling, he frowned. “No.”
“Then I’m not sure I can help you.” I reached to close the door.
“Wait!” His voice sped up. “My sister is getting into town today to visit campus, and she was supposed to stay with my aunt, but her whole family has the flu. I’d have her stay in our room, but I don’t think she’d be comfortable with my pervy roommate.”
“I heard that,” Dylan’s voice called, muffled from the room next door.
“But you’re not denying it,” Cash yelled back. I would have laughed if I hadn’t noticed where this was going. “I know this is a lot to ask, but is there any way she could stay with you?”
“Umm…how long?”
“Tonight through Saturday night.”
“I won’t be around tonight or Saturday night. Is that okay?”
His blue eyes flickered. “Yeah, of course.”
I let out a sigh before heading toward my desk. I was not a sucker. This wasn’t for Cash. This was for his sister. No one should have to room with Dylan. I could never be that cruel. “Here’s my key,” I said as I worked it through the keychain. “I’ll be knocking on your door a little before three tonight for it.” I gave him a hard look and added, “Make sure you wake up. I’ll be pissed if I get locked out.”
“Thank you.” He took the key and ambushed me with a hug. His shirt was smothering my face when he said, “Her name’s Jolene. She’s great. You’ll love her.”
I first woke up on Friday to the squeak of an air mattress. But the other noises kept me from falling back to sleep: hands rummaging through a suitcase, a phone vibrating, then the solid door opening and shutting. I rolled over to face the wall, sure it couldn’t yet be eight in the morning. If anyone was counting, that was only five hours of sleep. After the night I had, that wasn’t even close to enough.
The door opened again about an hour later. “You can turn the light on,” I said before throwing the covers back. The light flicked on, and a petite, rosy-cheeked teen walked toward me.
“Hey, it’s nice to finally meet you.” She reached her hand out to shake mine. She and Cash had the same curls, but hers were blonde and reached past her shoulders.
“Hi, Jolene, right?” I tried my best not to act irritated I was awake at such an ungodly hour. After all, it was Cash’s fault, not hers.
“Yep!” She smiled before launching in with her own sugary accent. “Thank you so much for letting me crash. I felt just awful dropping this on you.”
“No worries.” I yawned.
“Do you have to work that late often?”
“Three nights a week.”
“Oh, yeah? What do you do?”
I drew a deep breath, never quite sure how to answer this question. “I’m a dancer.”
A snicker sounded from Nicole’s bed. Great. She was awake for this.
“Really? What kind? Do you ever go on tour? You must have to rehearse all the time.” Her blue eyes appeared more naive with each question she asked.
Nicole sat up to laugh this time, waiting for my answer.
“Exotic.” Jolene’s expression turned puzzled.
Nicole heard the pause and clarified, “She’s a stripper.”
“Oh.” Jolene nodded in slow motion.
“I’m also just a good dancer,” I added to Nicole, “or do you not need help with your little movie anymore?”
Nicole rolled her eyes and looped her thick red hair into a ponytail.
“Are you a film major?” Jolene asked Nicole.
“Yeah. My group is working on a project with a Latin dance scene that Sawyer choreographed.”
“That’s so cool! I’m here to check out the screenwriting program. What do you want to do?”
“Direct.”
“They’re shooting the scene this afternoon,” I chimed in. “You should come with us.” Nicole wasn’t exactly the invite-a-wide-eyed-kid-along type, so I did it for her.
“Really?” Jolene’s eyes got even bigger, like only-possible-in-a-cartoon-big.
“Yeah, you can be an extra. Right, Nicole?”
Nicole lifted one shoulder in reluctant agreement.
Cash decided he had nothing better to do than hang out with Jolene and us at the shoot. I half wondered if he didn’t trust me with his little sister. He had that protective brother stance whenever he was around her. I didn’t have a brother, but Jake was like that with his sister even though she was two years older than him. Once, Jake found a guy trying to undress her at a party when she was passed out, and he broke his nose with one jab. It was clear now why I hadn’t told him everything about Travis and his friends. They would be dead, Jake would have gone to prison, and I had rather not see my boyfriend only through glass.
We had only an hour in the dance studio at school to get the scene perfect. My grade wasn’t on the line, but I had sunk probably twenty hours into this stupid scene, so I was unhealthily invested. More invested than one of the actors.
“Jared,” Nicole barked. “Where’s Emma?”
“Hungover,” Anne Marie, her roommate, announced from where she was stretching at the ballet bar.
“Shit. Sawyer, you have to fill in.”
I glanced down at my cropped tee shirt over my shorts, my belly button ring peeking out. “I’m not in a dress.”
“Cash.” Nicole handed him her key. “I have a short black dress in my wardrobe. Can you run and get it?”
I grabbed his arm as he was heading out the door. “No, Nicole. I’m not going to be on camera.”
“Why the hell not?” Her eyes narrowed. She was so pissed I thought her red hair might burst into flames.
“Why can’t Jolene do it?” I pointed at the young girl trying to stay out of our way. “She could fit in your dress.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“I’ll teach her.”
“In ten minutes? No, it has to be you. Cash, go!”
“Only if you ask nicely.” He crossed his arms and smirked.
She gritted her teeth. “Please.”
Cash was out the door, leaving poor Jolene to watch us fight. “I’m not doing it. Jared?” I called, “Can you teach Jolene here the steps?” I turned to Jolene. “Is that okay with you?”
“Sure!” She strutted toward Jared, her curls bouncing on her way.
“What is your problem, Sawyer?” Nicole hissed.
“Come on, give Jolene her Dirty Dancing moment.”
Jolene was good enough to be in Dirty Dancing. She had clearly crossed the border into Florida to salsa before. Which was a relief, because Nicole would have smothered me in my sleep if I screwed up her precious film.
“Does she pay you to help her?” Cash asked as we walked to the caf after the shoot.
“No, but we have a deal. Every time I help her, she owes me. When she’s famous and getting into all the A-list events, she has to invite me until I meet one of the following Ryans: Eggold.”
“Manageable,” Nicole said.
“Gosling.”
“More of a challenge.”
“Tedder.”
“Not even in the industry.”
“Ryan Tedder?” Cash asked.
“Lead singer of OneRepublic. And a brilliant songwriter. And gorgeous. And married.” I frowned.
“Cash,” Jolene called from behind us, “he helped write ‘I Know Places.’”
“Oh, got it,” he said as if that cleared everything up.
“What song is that?” I asked.
“Taylor Swift,” Jolene said.
I looked at Cash. “I’ve never heard that one. How do you know such an obscure—”
“You know, you really have a type,” Nicole interrupted. “Those guys all look alike.” It was true. They were all blue-eyed versions of Jake.
In the caf, Cash and I stood in the Korean barbecue line while Jo picked at the salad bar. I glanced across the room at her and asked Cash, “Do you guys have any fun plans while she’s here?”
“Besides going to Diddy Riese?”
“Cash! She flew all the way out here and you’re just taking her to ice cream?”
“First, not just ice cream. Diddy Riese.”
I rolled my eyes. Ice cream sandwiches weren’t a step up from ice cream in my mind.
“And,” he laughed, “in my defense, Jo had plans with my cousins before they got the flu. I think they were going to go to Disneyland.”
“Well, a bunch of us are going to this all-ages thing at the House of Blues tonight. It’s Downtown Disney, so next best thing. You guys should come with us.”
“Yeah?”
“Or we can just take Jo if you’re not into that.”
“Are y’all gonna be drinking?”
Obviously. “Probably.”
“I better go.”
“Oh, come on. We’ll have a designated driver.”
“Really?” He crossed his arms and stared down at me. “Who?”
I pursed my lips as I thought. “Yeah, you better go.”
My short yellow dress slipped up my thigh as I climbed onto the barstool. “Tequila shot, please,” I called toward the bartender.
“You’re doing a shot alone? Isn’t that kind of sad?” Cash chuckled as he leaned his hand on the bar.
“I drink shots when I’m at a club or a party, so I don’t have to keep my hand over my drink.” The bartender slid the shot in front of me. I threw it back.
“Keep your hand over your drink?”
“So no one drugs it,” I said with a flip of my hand. Did he not understand stranger danger?
“You won’t be on camera even though you’re stunning. You only drink shots, and this,” he said, snatching my burner from the bar, “is your phone. How often do you switch these out?”
Stunning? “I’m sorry. Are you investigating me?” I grabbed my phone back.
“Where are you from again?”
“Out of state. I’m also a size seven shoe and a 32-D bra if you want to scribble that on your notepad.”
“And your family. What are they like?”
I tilted my chin to my shoulder and gazed at him through my eyelashes. “What family?” I raised my hand for the bartender again. “Another tequila, please.” When he set another glass in front of me, I said, “Thank you, baby,” and winked as I leaned on the counter to twirl it between two fingers.
“You know,” Cash said with narrowed eyes, “you can’t keep him from drugging your drink.”
“That’ll be a short list of suspects, though, won’t it, Holmes?”
He stared at me a minute. “What’s your greatest fear?”
What the hell kind of conversation was this? I deadpanned, “You’re making me swoon.”
“Just answer.”
“You know, you’ve been asking me a lot of questions. How about you show me yours, and then I’ll show you mine?”
“Fair enough.” He nodded. “My greatest fear is watching someone I love die and being helpless to save them.”
“Really?” I felt my eyebrows crinkle and the pitch of my voice betray my surprise. “More than spiders or heights or amounting to nothing?”
“Really. You go.”
I swallowed the shot, squeezing my eyes shut as I did. Then I answered him, face to face, sure of the truth of my statement. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“No. You’re afraid of something.”
“I’m really not. Everything bad that can happen already has. There’s nothing left to be afraid of.”
His voice and eyes softened. “What happened?”
I leaned to whisper in his ear, “Are we going to waste all night at the bar?”
He watched my eyes as I stared at his. Then I felt his hand on my arm, warm even in the stuffy club. It eased passed my elbow down into my hand. He led me down the steps onto the sunken dance floor. Once we were in the sea of dancers, he spun me into him, my back to his, his hands on mine, one gliding over my hips and waist. His other hand outstretched mine before tracing up my arm.
“So, the white boy from Atlanta can dance?”
Cash’s breath fogged up my neck when he said, “I’m not as terrible at everything as you think.” He pressed my hips away, spinning me so I faced him, then cupped his hand around the nape of neck, dipping me back against his bent knee. I rolled to stand. Looping my hands behind his neck, I danced back into him. “For instance—” He pulled my chest into his. With his hands sliding down my back, he said, “I have a B in Linear Algebra.”
“Cash.” I tried not to laugh as I pressed his shoulders down so he’d take a knee. I stepped on either side of his thigh and lowered my face to his. “You’d know that’d impress me if I didn’t have an A.”
“Of course you do.” He chuckled as he twirled my hips away from him. His hand caught mine when he stood and snapped me back against him. “So, how exactly am I supposed to impress you?”
I smoothed down the buttons on his chest. “You know you don’t have to do anymore impressing.” My hand found one of his belt loops, and I inched him closer. I kept one of my legs bent between his as we swayed. “I’m yours if you want me.”
He leaned me back so I dipped from his right arm to his left, then pressed his lips against my ear. “No, you aren’t. Not the way I want you.”
“Please, there’s only one way any of you want me.”
“No. I want more than this. I know there’s more to you.”
“Not more that you want to know.”
“I want to know what happened.”
I was about to roll my eyes when I realized my opportunity. His resolve was crumbling as he danced hip to hip with me in that sweaty crowd. This was my chance to take control, maybe even demolish his will completely. I stared up at him with innocent, wide eyes and said, “I watched someone I love die.”
“Who?” His voice was so sympathetic it was barely audible.
I searched his eyes as they pierced mine. They were blue, which I knew, but now I saw they tinted brown at the pupils, which were pulsing in the flashing lights, like waves crashing into an island. “It’s a good thing to be afraid of,” I said as my hand crept up the back of his neck to pull his face close. I tasted his breath, then his lips. He dug his fingers into my hair, his kiss rougher than before. My body caved into his. I clung to him with a hand behind his neck and one still hooked to his belt loop. For those few moments, I stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped hearing the bass from the speakers overhead. I could only feel—only feel him.
Without warning, he tore my face from his. He shook his head and said, “This isn’t enough.”
“Then we’ll go to the bathroom. Or your car.”
He glared at me. “Sawyer, stop. This isn’t how I want you.”
“Really? You don’t want me sweaty and pressed against you?”
“When you decide to be real with me, I’ll be here.” He let me go and weaved through the crowd until he disappeared.
“What are you guys up to tonight?” I asked Jo the next evening as I swept eyeshadow into the crease of my lid.
“Cash is taking me to Third Street Promenade.” She was sitting on my bed, swiping the screen of her phone.
“I love that place, all the buskers and stuff. I think I’d like it better if I had money to shop, though.”
“I thought you made pretty good money.” There was a twinge of judgment in her voice, or maybe just discomfort. It didn’t bother me. She had been a good sport about her less-than-ideal Los Angeles accommodations.
“Yeah, but tuition is expensive.”
“Your parents don’t help?” What a cute question.
“Nope.” I smacked my lips together to press the gloss in place. “I gotta go.” I pushed my arms into my sweatshirt. “Tell Cash to buy me something pretty,” I said. With a wink, I waved and slipped out the door.
Saturday night was always busy at the club. I spent half my shift bouncing between two bachelor parties before getting a VIP room request from a groomsman, a cute-enough guy in his thirties with paradoxical freckles and salt-and-pepper sideburns. I took him by the hand, leading him down the dark hall for his private show. We hadn’t even passed through the curtain when he started pawing at my bare waist. He pulled me against him, scrabbling his fingers under the lace hem of my panties. I feigned a moan and added a breathy, “You have the cash for that?”
His finger was already inside me when he said, “I’ll pay anything to fuck you, Delilah.”
Delilah.
My breath stopped, and my body froze.
Then I laughed. It was this sick reflex—to laugh. But that was what people did, right? When they couldn’t cry or scream because they couldn’t feel enough to do either of those? They laughed. It was what happened to those too numb for pain, who instead sensed only a tickle. They laughed.
It was funny, actually. I was so careful to protect my identity, to change my number when I moved, to have no internet presence, but I made my living stripping. I should have known better.
I should have known that we kiddie porn stars never got to grow up.
This job was just a mating call. And now that one had found me, they all could. I had basically shouted, Hey, pedophiles! Delilah’s over here! Like what you saw? Now you can screw the real thing! Sure, it’s older and has boobs now, but it’s probably better than jacking off to a video of someone else raping it.
How had I not realized that any of them could recognize me? My face hardly changed in the last decade. It was this Cuban-cursed DNA drawn from the fountain of youth. Or maybe it was my inability to exorcise myself of that molested eight-year-old. Sometimes I wondered if I cut deep enough down my center, if I cracked my sternum and peeled open my ribcage, I’d find her clinging to my spine, digging her heels into my pelvic bone as I yanked at her. I saw her fingernails clawing at my lungs, her hands around my heart squeezing it to take my life with hers. But if I overtook her, if I rid myself of her, maybe the lingering freckles that bridged curved cheek to cheek would disappear. Cheekbones, stubborn and hard, would emerge beneath thinner skin. My viridescent eyes would dull like weathered rock. I would look older. Unrecognizable. Maybe then I’d be safe.
And that girl would die, along with all that happened to her.
I watched from the pole platform as the groomsman pressed me face-down into the couch and shoved himself into me, thrusting fast and hard. That was how I had sex these days, watching from a few feet away, waiting for the panting and jerking that cued it was almost over. It was how I did it when I was a kid. How I got through it at work. Even from the stage, I could feel my vagina sting with tiny tears, cuts that would leave pink stains in my panties.
He was zipping up his pants when I realized I better piece myself together and get my money. A pang radiated between my thighs when I straightened my arms to rise from the couch. I searched for my underwear on the ground and said, “It’s a thousand.” Had to tack on an extra two-hundred for him calling me Delilah. Dick.
“I’m not paying more than six hundred. You didn’t age well.”
I saw the fingers on his left hand as he buttoned his shirt. Silver ring. “Too much of a woman for you now? Do you have to think about me to get it up for your wife?”
“You? No. That little blonde who was with you, though. I can’t remember her—” Simone.
“Chomo,” I muttered under my breath while searching the floor for my underwear.
There was a coldness in his voice when he said, “Whore.” Then he added a self-justifying, “I’ve never touched a kid.”
I scoffed. Right, because this wasn’t him paying to rape the eight-year-old he wanted in those videos and pictures. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, baby.” Found my panties. I stepped into them then crossed my arms over my chest while I waited for him to pay.
He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and sifted through a wad of cash, dropping a handful of bills on the platform beside him.
I raised my eyebrow. “I said it’s a thousand, or do you want me to tell your friends how you know me?” I had no idea how much he already doled out, but I wanted all he owed me. Not that he’d ever give me all he owed me. He pulled two more bills from his wallet and added them to the pile. I added a sultry and condescending, “Good boy,” before folding the money and tucking it into my bra.
He raised his middle finger when he walked through the curtain. The feeling was mutual. I knew we’d both burn in hell, but, come on, his fire had to be hotter than mine.
Fully dressed—and by that I meant in damp panties and a bra functioning as a bank account—I crossed the club to the locker room to stash my earnings. I counted them behind the door of my locker. Huh. He actually had paid me a grand.
I wasn’t sure why, but for the first time, it didn’t feel right. Not that it hadn’t felt wrong before in the—this is illegal; I might get caught; no guy’s going to want me after this sort of way. But all those other nights, I knew who I was pimping out: an eighteen-year-old who screwed over everyone she cared about and was hiding in LA until the storm passed. The money was always dirty, but this—this money was repulsive. This was exploiting the eight-year-old who played out the vile fantasies of grown men, men who cowered behind their computer screens. This was child prostitution. This made my dinner come up.
I couldn’t save my long hair from the vomit as it poured into the toilet. My body shook all over. I crumpled on the locker room floor, trying to huddle it into submission. The stall wall, the inch-wide square tiles that made up the grungy floor, the air from the vent above—everything was cold, turning my shaking into near convulsing. Get your shit together. You have two hours left.
Music pulsed into the room. Someone had opened the door. “Emerald!” Derek, my manager, shouted. “I’ve got two guys in line for the VIP room, requesting you specifically. Hurry up!” Of course he did. I gripped the toilet seat, pulling myself over it just before I hurled again. “Uh, are you sick?”
I coughed and spit to clear my throat of the last pieces of my Caesar salad dinner before pushing open the stall door. “I’m going home.”
“Your shift isn’t over until two.”
I hugged my bare arms, still shivering. “You want me retching on people?” That was enough to make him leave.
When I walked to my car in the November chill, I wondered if I left a trail of that little girl’s blood on the pavement, the girl I raped tonight, the one I couldn’t surgically remove. Her death was no more than a fantasy. I was stuck with her. As soon as I shut the driver’s door, she took control. She cried hot, enraged tears. Tears of confusion. Tears of betrayal.
I couldn’t contain them as they carried dark trails of makeup down my cheeks. That kid wasn’t supposed to cry. She wasn’t allowed to. Jeff didn’t like that. The tears had to stop.
They did by the time I pulled into the parking lot at school. My sleeves were covered in mascara, my cheeks puffy, my green irises surrounded by crimson capillaries. I didn’t need to get my key from Cash since my door was already cracked open. It was only 12:30. Everyone was still awake. If Jo or Nicole was in my room, I didn’t know. Getting my towel and shower caddy was all I could focus on.
The shower burned. Scalding droplets pelted me as I scrubbed every inch of reddening skin. I slipped my fingers into my vagina, cringing as I scrubbed it over and over until it was dry and raw. I even brushed my teeth in the hot water, the cool mint stinging my throat where the vomit had chafed it.
I was as clean as I could get in my blue flannel pajama pants and tank top when I saw Cash sitting against the wall outside his door. His headphones were on, and he seemed engrossed in whatever he was watching on his laptop. I snuck in front of him to my door. I jiggled the handle. Locked.
“Need this?” Cash asked, holding out my gold key in his palm.
“Yes, thank you.” I tried to force a smile, but only half of my mouth cooperated. I reached for it, but his fingers closed over it.
“You okay?” He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, ready to disbelieve whatever I said.
“Yeah,” I sighed, “just a long night.”
“Aren’t you home early? A couple of hours early?”
“I threw up at work.” Code for give me my key now.
“That’s no fun.” He furrowed his eyebrows as he inspected me. “Come here.” I leaned toward his outreaching hand to let him brush the damp hair from my forehead and press his palm against it. He turned his hand over and ran the backs of his cool fingers down my pink cheek. My eyes closed at his touch. “You feel pretty warm, but I don’t think it’s quite to a fever.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s nothing.” I reached for the key again. Instead, Cash picked a book up from the floor beside him and put it in my hand. Seriously, this guy could not take a hint. “What’s this?”
“Jo said you wanted me to buy you something pretty.” He smiled.
“So you got me a book about a woman who carves words into her skin and tries to solve the murder of two little girls?”
“I did?” He took Sharp Objects from me and flipped it over to find the synopsis. “Jo said you liked Gillian Flynn.” Right, that did come up in a late-night slumber-party-esque conversation.
“Oh, I love her. She’s the Ernest Hemingway of the twenty-first century.”
“Who says that?”
“Uh, I do,” I said with unquestioning confidence.
He gave me a wary look.
“I mean, they’re different writers, for sure, but they’re both stylistic renegades. There’s Flynn, whose prose bites you so you’re bleeding out and begging for more. And Hemingway, who gave the literary world the finger by creating beautiful works with simple words and run-on sentences glued together with a hundred ands. They’re both honest in that sharp way that makes you feel what you’d rather not. You know what I mean?”
Cash smirked as he analyzed me. From his puzzled expression, I could tell he was coming up short.
“I don’t expect you to understand. You’re an engineer.”
“And what are you?”
Alone. Damned. Whore. Hunted. “Undeclared.”
He took another second to scrutinize me—me and the truth of my statement. Then he pushed the book back toward me and said, “Look inside.” I moved my finger under the cover and flipped it open. The inside was signed by Gillian Flynn herself.
“No!” I collapsed to sit on the floor next to him, careful not to put weight on any sore spots, and pushed his shoulder. “How did you… Where did you get this?”
“A little bookstore in Santa Monica.”
“I feel like I shouldn’t touch it.” I set it carefully in my lap. “I don’t want to depreciate the value. How much did this cost you?”
“Not that much.” He shrugged. “It’s not like it’s Jane Eyre. We’re not that close.” His lips curved.
“I can’t accept this. It’s way too—”
“Think of it as a ‘thank you’ for bunking with my baby sister for three days.”
“You didn’t need to do that. Jo’s actually pretty great.”
“I told you she was.”
I stared at the book, the dark cover with the razor image. After tonight, I needed a little more of what I didn’t deserve. So I stalled to keep Cash in the hall a bit longer. Okay, a lot longer. “What are you watching?” I nodded toward the screen before recognizing it. “Moneyball?”
“Yeah, I’ve never seen it, but Jo said it was written by some great screenwriter and I needed to watch it.”
“Aaron Sorkin.” I shifted my back against the wall.
“That sounds right.”
“It’s one of my favorites. ‘How can you not be romantic about baseball?’”
“You like baseball?”
“No, that’s a quote from the movie. And sort of. It’s my dad’s sport, and I love my dad so I tolerate it.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” I relented. “I have a dad. Anyway, the movie is about math, too. Wait,” I said as I placed my hand on his forearm and gave him the most intense look I could muster. “Are you sure you can follow along?” He elbowed my ribs before unplugging his headphones and pressing play.
I felt myself flirting with sleep even before my shift had been due to end. Call it an exhausting night. Or maybe I actually was sick. At some point, my temple slumped into Cash’s shoulder, firm and comfortable. I perked up enough to mutter, “He gets on base,” every time Brad Pitt cued Jonah Hill to. Cash’s shoulder bounced beneath me whenever I did.
My eyes flicked open to Cash’s neck, the tip of my nose brushing against it, breathing in the subtle scent of his cologne. I felt his arms cradle my back and legs. The movie must have been over, but I couldn’t remember the last half of it. He unlocked my door, striding over to lay me down on my bed. That instinctive fear pricked every inch of my skin when he didn’t leave right away. He moved toward the foot of my bed, took off my sandals, and then dropped them to the floor. The hair on my arms raised. What was he going to do to me? I couldn’t fight anymore, not tonight. I felt him lift my back slightly to pull the covers down under me, then back up to my chin. His palm checked my forehead for fever one last time before brushing my hair away from my ear. “Good night, Sawyer,” he whispered.
The anxiety dissolved, and an ache replaced it. It was this dull pain chipping away within my chest when he touched me. “Good night, Cash,” I mumbled and rolled toward his retreating warmth. I didn’t care that it hurt. I wanted that ache back. Wanted him here beside me to keep me safe as I slept, to push away everything that happened that night, everything that had happened the last seven months. But he closed the door, shutting me into the darkness behind him.
My eyes stared wide at the grey shapes in the room. Sleep wouldn’t return. I was alone. And they knew how to find me.