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My name was on the box in neat black script, but nothing else. No shipping label. No return address. It was a hand delivery.
My heartbeat kicked up into a new rhythm, even though it had just settled down from the scare. I scolded myself internally. There was no reason to freak out. Maybe a local had decided to do a hand delivery for a more personal touch and gotten unlucky with their timing.
But the other part of me whispered to my growing panic. It couldn’t be... right? Everything had been fine, no signs of anyone following me, nothing. He couldn’t have found me here after I’d been so careful.
I picked up a letter opener from my cup of pens and Sharpies and split open the box. And that was when the walls started to crumble around me. I couldn’t breathe, those iron hands squeezing my lungs again, my heart pounding like I was in the final mile of a marathon where I’d been chased by a lion.
Fuck.
This couldn’t be happening.
Deep down, I’d known what would be inside this box, and every time it happened, it felt a little more like dying. Which was exactly what he wanted.
A scarlet jewelry box sat within the cardboard, like the present every woman wanted to get for Valentine’s Day or Christmas. I would prefer to never see another jewelry box ever again.
The gold bracelet inside the box was brutally familiar. I had a whole collection of them. A curving cuff of gold etched with subtle images. This time the picture was of the Sandia Mountains—the view I could see if I walked outside.
I turned the bracelet over, the sight not getting any easier.
Ava Meadows
1992-2022
Another grave marker for a name I’d hoped I would be able to keep. Fuck. The engraved letters spurred me into action. I had been so careful this time, and this was the longest I’d ever been able to stay in a place without a sign of Nathan.
“Hey, Jess?” I called. She appeared in the doorway to the office. “The person who dropped off the package. What did he look like?”
She thought for a moment. “Really tall, blond. Good-looking too. I was tempted to ask him to stay, but there was already a line.”
I forced myself to smile at her disappointed pout. But I had to grind my teeth to keep that smile in place.
It really was him, and he hadn’t sent anyone to drop this off, he’d done it himself. I had to go. Now. It was probably already too late. If he was here, between me and the car...
I couldn’t let myself think that way. Head down, move quickly.
Words tumbled out of my mouth as I said something to Jess about an emergency at home and pushed out of the shop and into the summer heat. I couldn’t run. Running would make people notice and ask questions. But I walked as fast as I dared, heart pounding in sync with my steps. If I could make it to the car, I had a chance.
I forced breath into my lungs and back out. I’d practiced this, and it only worked if I kept breathing. But the panic was crawling up my throat and threatening to suffocate me. The feeling of eyes on my skin made it crawl, and the phantom pains started.
Not now. Please. Just let me get out.
One more breath hauled into my lungs. And another. One more block to the park. There were some kids playing on the playground and their parents with them. He wouldn’t try anything in front of kids, would he?
Stupid question. I’d learned to never question Nathan’s boundaries. He didn’t have any. I’d learned that the hard way, which is why I had an escape plan in place, one I’d had ready since the first day I’d gotten to Albuquerque six months ago.
My hands shook as I shoved the key into the lock and sat in the heat. I was still holding that damn bracelet, and I tossed it onto the passenger seat. I’d never gotten enough courage to leave one behind. All the same, I felt its presence like a brand as I peeled out of the parking spot and drove far too quickly from the place that had seemed so safe an hour ago.
The mountains loomed closer as I pushed my car as fast as I could through the streets without getting pulled over—that was the last thing I needed—toward the edge of the city where it broke into flat desert.
There was no need to go back to my apartment. The bag I needed was already in the trunk. I hadn’t lived anywhere in the past few years without that bag in whatever car I was using at the time.
The lot on the edge of the city looked abandoned, and for all intents and purposes, it was. Surrounded by a chain-link fence that I barely stopped to unlock, the space was a graveyard of things better left forgotten. The owner didn’t care about the land and rented pieces of it for storage. It was littered with broken cement pipes and piles of leftover springs from an infrastructure project gone wrong. Old and defunct phone booths stood in the corner, lined up like toy soldiers. And then there was my little piece of junkyard paradise.
A car-shaped lump under a cover coated with desert dust. From a distance—even up close—it looked like a thing long abandoned to the elements. But it wasn’t.
I parked my car and tore back the cover, revealing the secondhand car I’d purchased when I’d gotten here. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it would do the job. And right now, the job was getting out.
The panic that had gripped me was still present, threatening to claw back into my brain and drown me. But it had receded in the face of my determination and the cold blankness I’d associated with this routine. It was what I had to do. I would push it down until I could breathe again. Until I’d left yet another false life behind.
