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It rang and rang, and finally on the fifth ring it cut off, but there was no answer and no voice mail.
“Knox?” I whispered.
“Jesus, Low,” he breathed out in relief. “I kept wondering if he would get the phone before you, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get it to you. I thought if I took it there someone would see me and say something to him, and then he would—”
“Knox, stop!” I said, cutting him off. “Why did you send me a phone, and how do you know where I live?”
“I told you I would think of something—this was it—and it’s disturbing the things you can find on Google,” he said, then blew out a heavy breath. “How are you?”
I covered my face with a shaking hand; he’d asked how I was doing as if he hadn’t just put both of us in danger. “Knox, no, that’s not—I know what this is. I meant why is it here? Why would you risk sending me this? Didn’t you hear me when I told you that he searches everywhere for anything?”
“Because you need a way to be able to call for help—whether that’s me or someone else. Put other numbers in there, I don’t care. Just hide it somewhere he won’t look for it, and use it if you need help. I need to know that you’re not alone there with no way to let someone know that it’s going too far when you’re afraid to use your own phone or even call the cops.”
“But this is dangerous, Knox! You just put your life in danger, too,” I said through clenched teeth. Why couldn’t he understand that?
“Letting you live with that man is dangerous, Harlow! If you can make me watch you walk away with that bastard, then you can let me do this. I need this, too.” After a few seconds he said, “It hasn’t even been a week, but knowing what you live with, this week has felt longer and more exhausting than a year. And knowing you have this phone gives me the smallest peace of mind. Please, just . . . please.”
I shook my head slowly, but whispered, “Okay.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Now how are you?” he asked again. “Has anything happened this week?”
“No. I told you, he thinks I’m pregnant.”
“And you bought yourself a week, which is bullshit and is also about to be over. What happens when he finds out you’re not?”
My stomach churned. “It doesn’t matter.”
There was a pause, then in a low tone he demanded, “When is that week up?”
Tomorrow, I thought miserably. “It doesn’t matter,” I repeated.
“Harlow,” he whispered. The raw pain and fear in his voice shattered me, but I couldn’t do this.
“Thank you for this phone. This stupid, dangerous phone,” I said, and laughed lamely. “I will find a place to hide it for when Collin is home, and when I can, I will let you know that I am okay. But, Knox . . .” I trailed off and worried my lip as I tried to figure out how to word what I needed to say. “Unless the day comes where I’m ready for you to take me away, I won’t tell you what goes on in this house.”
“Low—”
“Trust me, I am doing this for you!” I sobbed, cutting him off.
There was a long, heavy silence, interrupted only by my hushed cries. “Okay. Okay, then I’ll wait for that day.”
“Thank you.”
The sound of a loud firehouse bell filled the phone, and Knox swore. “I need to go. I love you, Harlow. I always have.”
The call ended before I could respond, but I wasn’t sure what my response would have been anyway. The I love you that had slipped out the night of the fund-raiser came out so easily—as if my soul had said it for me. Now I was afraid to let my soul free. If I did, I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep myself safe in this house anymore, because my heart, my soul . . . my everything was reaching for the man I could never have again.
I slid down to the floor with the secret phone still in my hand, and cried for the love I’d thrown away, as I had every day for the last two and a half years.
When my tears had run dry, I slowly looked over to the clock on the stove, and scrambled to get up. Collin was going to be home in an hour, and I still needed to shower, figure out dinner, and get rid of everything that was currently sitting on the kitchen island.
I made a quick call to a restaurant to place an order, then took off through the house, glad that I’d cleaned everything obsessively all week, since I didn’t have time for it now, and ran to take a shower. Once I was clean and dried, I threw my hair up, put on a little bit of makeup and clean clothes so Collin wouldn’t think I’d been in the same thing all day, then ran back to the kitchen to grab up everything on the counter before leaving the house.
I drove to the restaurant to pick up the food, ditched the box that the secret phone had been delivered in in the dumpsters behind the building, and headed back home with just minutes to spare. Once there, I grabbed a couple of Ziploc bags and went into the backyard—the only place I thought Collin wouldn’t think of—and looked around for a spot to hide what now suddenly seemed like my most valuable possession.
I hated gardening, probably because I was horrible at it, and Collin laughed if anyone ever mentioned plants and flowers around me. I killed everything I tried to grow here because I’d grown up with so much rain and wasn’t used to all the sunshine, so we had a landscaping crew to make it look as amazing as it did. And as far as I knew, whenever Collin went tearing through the house and cars looking for birth control, “hidden” credit cards, or whatever else he thought I was hiding from him, he’d never once looked in the garden.
Choosing one of the large, potted plants up on the porch, I pushed aside the annoying amount of greenery coming out of it and played with the soil inside, judging where and how deep I needed the phone to go. After making a little hole, I sent Knox a message, powered down the phone, double-bagged and buried it, then went inside to get any remaining soil off my hands.
