Page 58 of One Step After Another

Crossing the room, he tossed the small pint of vodka he’d managed to snatch from the downstairs to the bed. “Depends.”

“If I ask you to stop again—if I tell you everything depends on you going away and staying there. It won’t matter. You can’t.”

“I promised my friend to find you.”

“And you have.”

“But you’re not where you should be, Penny,” he said. “And you know that, too.”

“I don’t belong anywhere now. I can’t.”

“Tell me you don’t miss them. Say you don’t give a shit about the godson you left behind. Open that fucking mouth of yours and at least lie. If you can’t even do that, then why would I stop? I’ve gotten this far—”

“But you won’t get more.”

He didn’t understand.

He also knew she wouldn’t explain.

Penny looked up from the blanket, observing while he lingered at the end of the bed. There was something soft in her stare, but he found something else there, too. A longing, maybe. But for what, he didn’t know.

“Come back to bed,” she said. “At least there’s this. We can have this.”

Right.

For now.