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It’s after eleven when I start messaging all the women named Sarah Dow on Facebook, and I’m officially pissed. Doesn’t Beck understand that Icounton him showing up when he says he will? Doesn’t he understand how fucking isolated I am without him?
I slam my laptop shut just after midnight, too angry to even face him if he manages to come home.
I don’t expect much from people, but I thought Beck kept promises.
Idiot.No one keeps promises.
It bothers me, when I finally go to bed, that I care as much as I do.
* * *
I’m makingcoffee and checking my phone when Beck’s bike rumbles up the next morning. I throw my phone in my purse. He wouldn’t have known I was checking for a text from him, butI’llknow.
When he walks in, I’m staring out the window, hip pressed against the counter. I don’t turn around to greet him but instead seethe quietly, fantasizing about throwing the glass coffee pot at his pretty face.
I can’t believe he didn’t come homeat all.
His keys rattle as they hit the table. I turn toward him and wait for an apology, but instead he stomps into the kitchen, coming to a dead halt as his eyes run over me, head to toe.
“Do me a favor,” he snarls, “and start wearing some fucking clothes around the house, huh?”
My eyes narrow. “Sorry. Should I stay fully clothed twenty-four hours a day just in case youhappento come home?”
His jaw goes tight. “This is the first night since you got here that I haven’t come home.”
“Youtoldme you were coming home early.”
“Does it matter?” he asks, closing in on me, his voice low and dangerous. What is it about that voice? Beck scares a lot of people, but Beck at his scariest turns me on like nothing else. He rests a single hand on my hip. “Did youmissme?”
The air grows thick and my pulse races, the hair on my arms standing on end. He’s being a dick and my nipples are diamond-hard, as if he’s doing something else entirely.
I push his hand away. “Piss off. You get to go hang out with your friends. You have a whole bar full of people you can talk to. You know who I speak to? You, and the checkout girl at Safeway. She asks if I want bags and I sayyes. So, one word aside from talking to you.”
“You seem to be forgetting a conversation,” he says. “A nice long one you had with Caleb the week before last.”
It’s as if I’m ten again, caught stealing food from a foster mother who already had it in for me. Knowing I was about to get hit—and deserved it.
Except I’m a grown-ass adult and I don’t owe anyone a fucking apology.
“I didn’t realize I was supposed to be reporting all my conversations to you,Herr Commandant. It wasn’t a big deal. We barely said ten words to each other.”
His hand lands on the counter beside me. He’s still too close. “Yet you managed to get some lipstick on his collar, which he actually believes was a fucking accident.”
My pulse triples, but weakness could be fatal in a situation like this. “It was,” I reply, walking away.
“Bullshit. I asked very little of you staying here. Two things. And you’ve already blown off one. So how long ’til I come home and find you comatose on my couch?”
I round on him. “Don’t you dare say that to me because no one alive is trying harder not to use than I am right now.No one.”
His arms fold across his chest. “I thought you had it all under control.”
I swallow. If I tell him it’s getting harder every day rather than easier, he’s going to want me to go back to rehab. If I tell him nothing is going according to plan with Caleb, he’ll point out that I’m not supposed to have a plan in the first place. “I’m in a town where the only people I can safely see all hate me. I have a degree from the top MBA program in theworldbut can barely get a job interview, and my husband—the only thing that got me clean—wants a divorce. So don’t sit there with your job and your social life and all that pussy you get on demand and talk to me about my failings. Staying clean requires a level of restraint you can’t fucking imagine. I could drive to my old dealer’s and be welcomed with open arms, but instead”—my voice starts to crack and I have to grit out the last words—“I stay in this hovel waiting for you, and you don’t show up like you said you would.”
I hate that I sound so needy, and I refuse to cry in front of him after his bullshit accusations. I go to my room, slamming the door behind me. Moments later, his bike roars as he leaves.
They told us in rehab to admit when we were struggling, but I told Beck and he couldn’t run fast enough. They told us the lapses in our job histories wouldn’t be a problem, but I’ve only gottenoneinterview, and it barely lasted three minutes. I’m beginning to wonder if anything they said in rehab was based on reality and not some Utopian society where an apology and good intentions solve every problem.
I rise from my bed and start packing. I’ve just alienated the only friend I have other than Ann. I have no idea where I’ll go, but it’s clear my time at Beck’s is done.
