Page 55

"You're in my way," I say.

"We are," Beck says.

For weeks, on my computer screen, Diablo made these men come to her. Made them book her and pay her, made them beg and wait. But that was a fake name and a rented hour, and we all know it now.

But in the daylight, the real nine-to-five world, I was the one who came to them. Every morning for over a year, to their glass tower, bringing their coffee and routing their calls and scheduling their travel. And when the whole thing imploded in a musty conference room, I was the one who'd been summoned. They held every card. They always did.

And now, three of the most powerful men in the city are standing in a strip-mall lot in front of a payday-loan place, in my world, with no tower, no leverage, and not one card left to play.

For once, they're the ones who don't belong.

Beck steps forward, and this time, the man does not have the upper hand.

"The one thing I'm good at," he says, "is walking into a room and knowing what every person is after. I built my whole business on it. And I never once did it with you. For a year, you sat at that front desk, and I only saw a receptionist. On my computer screen, I let myself see a fantasy. I never looked at the woman standing between these two things, because looking meant wanting something I couldn't buy or close or control."

"You think you were a joke to us," he says. "I know you do. You think three rich men found the quiet girl at the front desk and had themselves a laugh. But that’s wrong, Agnes. You were the one thing three supposedly smart men were too busy to bother looking at, and I regret that. So I'm not going to stand in a parking lot and tell you I know you, because I don't, and you'd know I was lying. Here's the whole sum of what I actually let myself notice, in all that time. You smile at Marco on the loading dock every single morning because you decided somebody ought to. You put the label maker back exactly where it lives. And you've got a laugh you hide whenever one of us guys is around."

Something in his face gives way.

"That's the whole of it, Agnes. That's how little I actually know you, just a handful of things I caught by accident, nowhere near enough to have any right to you. And even that little was enough to make us guys come running to you in a strip-mall parking lot, hat in hand."

The nail-salon music and the traffic and the cracked-asphalt parking lot drift far away until there's nothing left but Beck Cross admitting he never bothered to look at me. I open my mouth to speak but can’t think of anything to say.

Elias chimes in. "I didn't let myself look at you either," he says, low. "Because I knew the day I did, you'd get into my head and I'd never get you back out. And I don't allow that. Ever. But it didn't help. You got in anyway."

Theo doesn't bother with a speech at all. He just says, "I told you it was never a joke. You need to believe me."

"We're not going to dress this up," Beck says. "We came to say it out loud, in the daylight, in front of all the gods and this payday-loan store. We want you. All three of us. Not Diablo, not the girl at the front desk, but you. We know we don't deserve a yes, and we're not going to try to buy one or charm one out of you, because that's exactly how we ended up in a parking lot instead of in your good graces." He holds up his empty hands. "So that's it. Tell us to go, and we'll go, and we won't come back. Or don't. It's yours to decide."

For a second, I don't answer. Most of what's in my chest is still furious, and I'm not going to stand here and pretend it isn't. But underneath the fury, there's the other thing, the one I couldn't kill in three weeks of trying, and it's still here, quiet and stubborn.

"I'm not saying yes," I hear myself say.

Three faces fall at once, and God help me, I feel it.

"And I'm not saying no."

I make myself hold all three of their gazes, one after another. "I've got a couple of things to put right starting with my sister and a debt with my name on it, and I need to face these alone. Because if I say yes today, standing here with nothing to my name, I'll never be sure I chose you or got rescued by you.”

"So what do we do?" Beck says.

"The one thing you're terrible at." I sling my bag over my shoulder and head for the bus stop toward my own place, my own life, my own apartment, and look back at them over my shoulder, red lips and all.

"You wait."

The knock comes at eight that night, and I know it's Birdie before I open the door, because Birdie is the only person alive who knocks in a little rhythm, like the door is a bongo and she's workshopping a song.

I haven't spoken to her in three weeks. Not since the fight, the one where I finally said all the things I've been swallowing. To make matters worse, I moved and changed my number.

The silence did the rest.

I open the door anyway. I was always going to open the door. That's my whole problem, right there.

She's standing in my sad little hallway, holding a grocery bag in one arm and, in the other, a giant houseplant.

"Before you say anything," she says, "this is a peace lily, his name is Gerald, and he is not up for discussion."

"How did you find me?"