Page 28

“Well. Sort of.” My voice catches. “I have a house.” Do I? The thought sails unbidden into my mind—Mom hunched over the kitchen table, ashtray overflowing, always looking for something to scold me for. Wade pounding on my bedroom door, telling me to stop hiding in my room, only to spend the next hour or so reminding me why I hide in my room.

But Wade will never be there again.

My stomach turns with guilt because underneath the horror, underneath the fear and shock and nausea, there is something else—a small kernel of relief.

I cover my face with my hands. “Oh, my God.” The cat nudges my knee. “I’m horrible. He’s dead, and part of me is glad.” Saying it out loud tastes vile. “I didn’t want him to die. I—I didn’t.” My voice cracks. “I wanted him to leave. For Mom to dump him. But not like this.”

He presses his forehead to my palm. A fresh sob catches in my throat. “You don’t think that makes me bad?” He continues purring. “Right.” I sniff and wipe my nose on my sleeve. “Sorry.”

He pricks his ears, alert, then relaxes as a distant delivery truck rattles by. I do, too. “You’re brave,” I tell him. I study the thin scar near his nose, the torn ear, the uneven coat. “Do you fight a lot?”

He ignores me.

“Wade would’ve liked you.” I smile through tears. “He said fighting was proof of strength. I don’t want to fight people. I just… want to make pretty things.”

“I got into college,” I tell him. “Fashion design.” He pauses grooming and glances up, and I flush. “I even got a scholarship.” He lets out a small trill, and I grin, trembling. “Thanks. Finally, an appropriate reaction. No one else cares.”

He stretches, claws scratching the pavement, then pads off without a backward glance. “W-wait!” He stops at the alley’s mouth, tail flicking. “Come back. Please?”

He slips beneath a fence and vanishes.

The alley falls quiet again, and without my companion, everything else feels harder. It feels terribly real again.

My body feels like I just ran a marathon, which, to be fair, I basically did. My phone sits heavy in my pocket, so I pull it out and check the time, shocked to see it’s been hours since I left with Wade. I have a missed call and a passive-aggressive text from my manager at work because I didn’t show up.

I have no idea where I even am.

I push myself upright, using the wall for support as my legs feel like a newborn deer’s.

“Okay,” I whisper. “One thing at a time.”

That’s how I sew.

That’s how I save money.

That’s how I’ve survived nineteen years in Mom’s house.

One small thing, then another.

First, I need to figure out where I am.

Second, I need to figure out where to go. The police? Back home?

Third—well, we’ll figure it out when we get there.

One thing at a time.

3

Adrien

The problem with incompetent men is that they rarely have the decency to contain their incompetence to themselves.

Instead, they spread it.

They miss details. They get greedy. They panic when they shouldn’t, talk when they’ve been instructed to shut the fuck up, improvise when the plan was perfectly adequate to begin with, and eventually somebody like me has to come along behind them and clean up whatever mess their stupidity left on the floor.

Sometimes literally.