Page 22 of The Quiet After The Fall

I grab my purse and I’m out the door before I can change my mind.

Ten minutes later, I park at the train station.

I buy a one-way to Grand Central at the machine because it’s the first option at the kiosk and I’m not second-guessing myself tonight. I don’t have a plan past getting on the train and that’s fine with me. Even an hour of motion, surrounded by strangers, watching Ashford shrink behind me, feels like more action than I’ve had in days.

The platform is quiet for a weekday, but then again it’s summer and Ashford is always a ghost town. A couple holding onto luggage waits a few feet away. A woman in scrubs scrolls her phone. Normal-looking people doing normal things. Nothing out of the ordinary. I wonder if that’s their first impression of me too. That I’m normal. Nothing is further from the truth.

I find a bench and check the board. Six minutes until arrival.

Good…not enough time to talk myself out of this.

I don’t let myself think about the ring around Ella’s neck or Knox’s thumb tracing my cheekbone or Owen’s expression in that photo from Wonder World. I’m not doing that tonight. Tonight, I’m just a girl in a good outfit getting on a train.

The platform shudders when it pulls in.

I get on, find a window seat in a half empty car, and drop my bag in my lap. As soon as the doors hiss shut, I release a breath.

I’ve got a blissful forty five minutes to sit here and do nothing at all. Not think or cry or wonder.

I dig through my purse for my AirPods, pushing past my wallet, crumpled receipts I keep meaning to throw away, lipgloss⁠—

The seat next to me shifts. Weird, this car is practically empty.

“Thorne.”

My hands go still inside my purse. No fucking way.

I turn slowly. Knox is sitting there, one arm resting along the back of my seat, sleeves rolled to the elbow, looking at me with those stormy eyes.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Running away without me?”

I scoff and turn toward the window as the train lurches forward.

“No bags, one-way ticket…dressed like that.”

“Dressed like what?” I whisper-shout, turning back to look him in the eyes, because how dare he?

I hate the way he slowly peruses me, drinking me in. I know that look. I’ve seen it right before he screwed me over.

“You knew I’d come.”

“You’re absolutely delusional.”

He inches closer so our thighs are touching. “Maybe I am, but that doesn’t change anything.”

I close my eyes and take a second to center myself. This was supposed to be a no Aldrich, no Ashford, no assholes night. But no…I can’t have that because apparently Knox is a psycho stalker now.

“What do you want?”

His tongue darts out to wet his lips and his eyes travel south again, but only for a second before they’re back burning into mine. “I want⁠—”

“Tickets!”

The conductor chooses that exact moment to clomp his way down the aisle, his hole puncher abnormally loud in the quiet space.

Knox pulls out his wallet, but waits for me to hand over my ticket first. “I’ll take whatever she has,” he says.