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As he’s waiting for the elevator, I realize I said nothing back. So when it arrives, and he steps inside, I lift my hand in a wave. “Bye.”
He smiles again just before the elevator door closes, and I smile back even though he can’t see me anymore.
I can go back to being the Saige who could make small talk like no one’s business. It won’t be easy, but no one at the restaurants I worked in before would have been able to guess the shit Dad forced me to deal with from my smile.
“I can be her again,” I whisper. “It’s just going to take time. And practice.”
Nodding firmly, I grab the grocery bags and carry them inside, again remembering to go back to triple lock the front door.
It won’t keep Nathan out, but it could give me the second or two I need to get out of the bathroom and onto the fire escape.
Which reminds me.I return to the bathroom, sidestepping the mess I made in the living room, and push the bathroom window open a little more.
With Aden’s apartment on the fourth floor, I can’t look down for too long before I get that sick feeling in my belly. Heights aren’t my favorite thing in the world, but the climb is doable.
I’ll have to remember to leave the window open from now on because if it had been Nathan… there’s no way I’d have had time to unlatch the window before he was on me.
“Don’t think of that, Saige,” I whisper.
But Idothink of it.
I think of Nathan dragging me back to Rylan, of the sound the handcuff will make when it snicks shut around my wrist, of the cold when he rips my clothes off my body. I wrap my arms around myself as if I can feel the chill again. As if I’m already back there.
Maybe he won’t pass me around the pack right away. But eventually, he will. And before he does, he’ll want to punish me for Felix. He’ll shift to wolf and he’ll bite me again, or maybe he’ll…
A sob breaks free.
And then I realize I’m on the cold bathroom floor, my arms wrapped around my legs, and my face wet with tears, trembling so hard my teeth are chattering.
I can’t go back.
Scrambling to my feet, I’m halfway out of the window before I stop.
No. Beforesomethingstops me.
The hounds. I remember the picture on the wall and I want to go back into the living room where I can see it again.
Tears continue to trickle down my face, but suddenly I feel like I can breathe again. The only reason I was able to get any sleep at all was because of that picture. It was why I slept on the couch and not the bed.
Looking at it—atthem—I could believe that Nathan wouldn’t get to me because they wouldn’t let it happen. Because the thing they were protecting was me.
Maybe I’m crazy, and I just don’t know it yet.
Why would they give a shit about what happened to me? And how can a picture of three men I don’t know make me feel safe? Strangers.
But that doesn’t change how I feel as I return to the living room. And to the picture.
After a long moment, I sink onto the couch and wrap my arms around my legs, but I never take my eyes from the photograph.
It feels like it’s the only thing holding the darkness back.
I sit that way for a long time. Hours. When my breathing is steady again, and I’m not gripping my legs so tight, I rise from the couch and clean up the mess on the floor. After putting the groceries away, I head for the bathroom, certain that cleaning up Saige Leo won’t be as easy as the spill on the floor was.
* * *
I only jump a little at the next knock on the door. Mostly because it’s accompanied by a familiar voice. “Lily? It’s me.”
Aden.
