I laughed, but it hurt too much and I clamped my lips closed.
Gladys sighed. “Fine. Go. I’m going to call you later.”
“I’ll answer,” I said, getting down from the table. Dex came to my side, but I waved him back. I didn’t want to touch him and risk another vision. I hadn’t had one since we first met, but I wasn’t about to push it. After everything I’d been through tonight, having that vision again might push me over the edge.
When we stepped outside, I welcomed the freezing air. It felt good against my cheeks, which were still covered in hives. His car was parked right at the curb in front of the doors. He went ahead of me and opened the passenger-side door and I sank into the buttery leather seat. I could get use to this car.
He drove to my apartment without any directions and at first I thought that was suspicious until I remembered he’d already brought me home once. Except this time he didn’t just pull up to the curb to drop me off. This time he found a parking spot.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” he said, not waiting for me to agree or deny, but coming around and helping me out of the two-seater. The walk to my front door seemed endless and when we got there, I had to dig through my bag to find my keys because everything was in a large heap at the bottom. Finally, I found them and unlocked the door, swinging it open and reaching inside to switch on the light.
“Do you want to come in for a minute?” I asked, my mind thinking maybe we could finish our conversation from earlier.
He followed me inside and I shut the door, throwing one of the locks. He was standing in the center of the room, taking in everything. “This is a nice place,” he said.
I made a sound, not really agreeing or disagreeing. It was in a crappy neighborhood and was as tiny as a shoebox, but I spent some time trying to make it look nice and feel like a home.
“It’s okay. I did what I could.”
“I like it,” he said, running his hand along the back of the couch where I kept a soft blanket. “It’s real.”
Real? That was kind of an odd thing to say. “Your house is really nice too.”
“Yeah,myhouse.”
He seemed to put some emphasis on the word.
“It is yours, right?”
He must’ve heard the curiosity in my voice because he glanced at me. “Yeah. I just moved there so it doesn’t really feel real yet—you know? This place… it seems lived in.”
I nodded. “New house and a new car.” I went over to the couch and sat down, sighing in relief. “Did you just move here, too?”
“Something like that,” he said, looking over at the small window to his left. “How long have you lived here?”
“About a year. It’s all I could afford right now.”
“It’s better than the streets,” he murmured as he moved across the room.
“What was that?” I said, not sure I heard him right. I pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and tossed it over my legs.
“They seemed to know you,” he said, walking closer to the window and staring out into the dark. “At the clinic.”
“Yeah. I intern there a couple days a week. I’m studying to be a doctor. Which explains why I can only afford this place.”
He was silent a moment, then he said, “You save people.”
The tone of his voice was a little odd and I wished I could see his face and not his back as he spoke. “Well, not really, but I hope to help them.”
When he didn’t say anything else I leaned back into the cushions and said, “I haven’t done anything like what that man did for me.”
“It always comes back to him,” Dex said quietly.
“What’s your connection with him?”
He swung around to face me. “I told you I don’t have one.”
“I think you’re lying.”
