Page 220 of I’m The Worst

The corner of his mouth twitches.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that…would you?”

“No.”

“Really?” I press.

“Mm.”

“So that’s your official statement?”

His fingers tighten around mine for just a second. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I study his face, my thumb grazing a fresh cut across his knuckles that definitely wasn’t there yesterday. “Hypothetically…if someone was making rapists disappear…”

His eyebrow lifts almost imperceptibly. “Hypothetically.”

“Would it hurt? Whatever happens to them…do they suffer?”

He brings my hand to his mouth again, his lips brushing my knuckles as he speaks against them. “They meet someone worse.”

A warmth spreads across my chest.

Some people spend their lives wondering if monsters exist. I fell in love with one. And somehow, the safest place I’ve ever been is in his shadow.

The highway stretches ahead of us, washed in late afternoon gold. Jackal is sprawled across the back seat, snoring like he didn’t try to climb into Wolff’s lap twice before we even got on the freeway.

A year ago, I wouldn’t have believed any of this.

Not this road trip. Not Wolff driving with one hand on the wheel and the other wrapped around mine. No waking up beside him every morning in a house that somehow became ours without either of us knowing how to say it out loud.

Not Jackal stealing Wolff’s side of the bed and getting away with it.

That’s still my favorite part.

Wolff can make grown men piss themselves with a single look, but one German Shepherd mix with too-big ears and a dramatic sigh has him trained like a house pet. Every morning, Jackal drops his food bowl on Wolff’s chest. Every morning, Wolff glares at him like he’s considering homicide. Every morning, he gets up anyway.

The car slows as we turn off the main road and into a quiet neighborhood lined with big trees and houses set far back from the street. I wasn’t sure how to bring Miranda up again after everything. His family. His past. The pieces of him he keeps locked behind steel and silence. When I moved the last of my things into Wolff’s house, he found the folded note Miranda had given me tucked inside one of my books.

The address.

The date of Jake’s memorial.

He stared at it for a long time, then set it on the counter and walked away.

The date came and went. I didn’t push. I didn’t mention it again. Then, a month ago, an invitation arrived in the mail. A cream envelope, covered in blue train stickers. A child’s handwriting crooked across the front beneath Miranda’s neat one.

It sat unopened on the kitchen island for almost two weeks.

Then one morning, Wolff picked it up, slid a knife under the flap, and read it without saying a word.

Now we’re here.

The truck rolls to a stop in front of a large brick house with blue balloons tied to the mailbox and a paper train taped to the front window. Bright little flags line the porch railing. Somewhere inside, children are screaming and laughing, the sounds faint through the closed windows.

Wolff cuts the engine and sits with his hands on the wheel, his knuckles going white from his grip. I don’t say anything immediately. I’ve learned that sometimes silence is the only way he knows how to breathe.

A full minute passes.