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Lukas gazes down at me. “I don’t know.”

It’s such an un-Lukas thing to say. For some reason, that makes me feel better.

“We’ll figure it out together, though,” he continues, grazing my forehead with a bearded kiss. “Whatever comes. However messy it gets.”

I burrow closer and tuck my face into the warm column of his throat. He smells like vodka and sex, like cigarettes and the ocean.

“Together,” I repeat.

“Together,” he repeats.

He holds me for a while longer. I could stay like this forever. I remember learning about that couple in Pompeii who held each other while the volcano rained ash around them. Archaeologists exhumed them centuries later, but they still hadn’t let go.

That’s how it feels. Like my life is erupting into soot and hellfire and he’s all I have left to cling to.

But phoenixes are reborn from ashes, aren’t they?

Maybe I can be, too.

Lukas sighs, and when I peek up at him, I see the warning signs of bad news on his face. “What is it?” I ask.

“I have to go,” he murmurs against my hair. “The world has been on pause, but it won’t stay that way forever. I need to go meet with my attorneys and anyone who’s still loyal to me.”

I groan. “Now?”

“Unfortunately.” His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek. “Kir won’t sit idle. Whatever he’s planning, I need to be ahead of it. He’s got the company and he’s welcome to it, but there’s more he could come for if he chooses to. I have to make sure you’re protected.”

I know he’s right. None of our problems have magically resolved themselves just because we spent the better part of a week hiding from reality. The outside is still out there, sharpening its knives.

“Okay,” I say, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to wrap myself around him like a koala and refuse to let go. “Do what you need to do.”

Lukas tips my chin up and kisses me. “I’ll be back before dark,” he promises.

Then he’s gone.

I lie there for a while. I’m exhausted, largely because I spent half the night on the verge of a cruelly denied orgasm, but also because I ended it by getting hit by the emotional equivalent of the runaway bus fromSpeed.Everything hurts strangely. I want to cry like a baby.

Being rebirthed is not a fun feeling—ask any wailing newborn. Ask Lukas when he cried on those stairs. This shitstings.

It feels good, too, though.

Eventually, I peel myself out of bed and shuffle to the bathroom. The mirror holds nothing I care to see, unfortunately. Fixing the deplorable state of my general being is just not happening right now, but I do the best I can.

I take an everything shower, then braid my hair like Mom used to do it. Going through the old motions feels good. Like a little tribute to her.

Once the braid is tied off and I’m wearing clothes again, I go downstairs into the kitchen. While I eat an apple, I scrounge my phone out of a drawer, where I abandoned it days ago after Lukas did the same with his. Unsurprisingly, it’s dead as a doornail.

I find a charger, plug it in, and wait for the little apple icon to appear. After what feels like an eternity, the screen lights up.

Notifications cascade down like a slot machine hitting jackpot. Texts, emails, missed calls—they pile on top of each other so fast I can’t even read them. Jillian’s name appears maybe thirty times. Work emails with increasingly frantic subject lines. News alerts with my name in them. A voicemail notification badge pops up that reads49.

Forty-nine voicemails?! Christ on a cracker. That’s like my entire lifetime total, doubled up in one shot.

I start scrolling through the texts first, looking for anything that seems urgent. Jillian’s messages range fromwhere are you???toRAE ANSWER YOUR PHONEtoI swear to god if you’re dead I’m going to kill you.There’s a certain comfort in her consistency, if not her logic.

But then I see something that bothers me.

MISSED CALLS (11): WESTGATE RECOVERY CENTER