Текст книги "As Dead As It Gets"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

I spotted her body from fifty feet away, lifelessly sprawled on the rocky ground. Her jaw was slack, her arms splayed out at her sides. She was very dead.

I knelt next to her anyway and reached up to brush a lock of hair away from her eyes.

She looked so peaceful—and that was horribly wrong.

Because Elliot was never meant to be peaceful. She was supposed to shine and blaze like a Fourth of July sparkler.

“I’m so sorry.” My voice was low, as if she and I were having a difficult conversation.

But of course there would be no more conversations.

Suddenly her hand shot up and grabbed my wrist.

Her eye sockets melted to darkness. She bared her teeth and pulled me down close to her face.

A rotten stench—the scent of death—puffed into my face.

“I’m doing this for you,” she hissed.

Then she fell backward onto the gravel.

I’m doing this for you.

Not to me. Not because of me. For me.

The sun was bright overhead and the inside of the car was growing warm.

I’d hauled myself up to the main trail and trudged back to the parking lot, but that was as far as I could make myself go.

I need water, I thought. I’m dehydrated.

But I really didn’t care.

The hills off in the distance began to blur together into a mass of rusty browns and dull grays.

Girls would just keep dying. There was nothing I could do to keep them from dying. And it was somehow my fault. Not that I would ever figure out why or how it was my fault, since Lydia was gone—which was also my fault.

There would be no answers.

There would just be more dead girls.

MORE CARS, CARRYING HIKERS, came and parked alongside me. That meant it wouldn’t be long before someone happened across Elliot’s body. I hoped they would. The sooner they found her, the less her family would suffer.

Finally, I started my car and drove home. I was so distracted that I nearly ran a red light and had to swerve to keep from hitting a guy on his bike.

I parked and wondered vaguely what my next step should be. Call the police? Call Agent Hasan? Turn myself in?

There was no getting around Jared’s being Laina’s power center. Aralt had been tied to the girls in the Sunshine Club as his power center, but he was governed by his libris exanimus, the book that contained him between stints with clubs.

Laina was just a ghost. I mean, she was a superghost (what that meant, exactly, I wasn’t sure), but as far as I could tell, she wasn’t controlled by any sort of book.

Or…was she?

My mind flashed back to Jared’s locked closet door. Did the closet contain something he didn’t want me to see? Something to do with Laina?

No. Impossible. He’d been truly shocked when I’d tried to tell him that she was a ghost. That was the kind of reaction you couldn’t fake.

I walked into our town house without bothering to wonder if there would be anyone there. Mom had her board meeting. Dad had gone to work—there was no point in his staying home if Kasey and I were at school.

Only we weren’t.

I’d skipped school—

And Kasey was home, too.

She stepped into the hallway, staring me down. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just decided to go for a walk instead of going to school.”

“A walk?” Her gaze traveled up and down my filthy beat-up body and my torn, stained clothes.

“Yeah.”

“Where did you go last night?” she asked.

There was no point in denying it. I blinked. “Out.”

“Lexi…” Her hair was pulled into a low loose bun. Her hands were on her hips. She looked like a character from a TV show about lawyers. “You always leave…right before the bodies are found.”

“What are you saying?”

“If she’s making you hurt them, tell me,” Kasey said.

I had to take a step back and lean against the wall to keep my legs from giving out. How on earth could my little sister know about Laina? And how on earth could she suspect me of being a murderer?

I shook my head. “I just learned about her last night, Kase.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “I heard you talking to her a week ago.”

“Really? To Laina?” I asked, my investigative side forcing my hurt-slash-shocked side to take a backseat. “A week ago? Was I asleep?”

“What?” She quirked her head to the side, puzzled. “Who’s Laina?”

We stared at each other.

“I heard you talking to Lydia,” she said.

“Oh, that. No, Kase,” I said. “It’s not what you think.”

She swallowed hard. “I know what it’s like, Lexi—to be lonely, and to think a ghost is your friend. Does she tell you what to do? Does she promise you things? Is she…is she making you hurt those girls?”

“No,” I said. “Kasey, you don’t understand. Lydia is—”

I cut myself off and took a shaky breath. As much as I’d wanted to protect my little sister and keep her out of this world, it was too late now.

“Lydia’s my friend,” I said. “But not in a bad way. She’s not hurting anybody. She’s helping me.” Or she was—until I killed her.

Kasey’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe me—and after what she’d been through, I didn’t blame her. Everything I was saying was something she could have said about Sarah.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I mean, you either believe me or you don’t. But I wouldn’t lie about it. You never lied about Sarah.”

She thought about that. “Not to you.”

“Lydia’s not behind this. She’s not hurting those girls—and neither am I.”

“Then why did you find Kendra?” she asked. “I mean, it was so obvious, once I thought about it. And Ashleen—that was your lens cap they found, I know. I checked your camera.”

I wanted to shout at her, shake her. She wasn’t supposed to be doing this. She was supposed to have a normal, happy life, and be a normal, happy girl. She was supposed to be pretty and popular and sail through high school, letting me absorb all of the pain, all of the suffering.

But what if—the thought hit me hard—what if that wasn’t what she wanted?

What if she wanted to help?

She was fifteen years old. I’d been fifteen when I fought Sarah.

Just like I had the right to fight…so did she.

“In October,” I said, “right before Lydia died, she threw chemicals in my face. They got in my eyes, and I was afraid I was going to go blind. So I retook the oath, and Aralt started fixing my eyes. I never got the chance to read the abandoning spell because Lydia burned the book.”

Kasey’s mouth dropped open. “Aralt is doing this?”

“No,” I said. “He’s gone. But my eyes…they’re different now.”

She stared right into them, and I fought the urge to turn away.

“They’re haunted,” I said. “I can see ghosts in photos and on TV.”

“My God, Lexi,” she breathed. “Why didn’t you say something?”

I choked. “Wait—before you freak out. There’s more.”

And I told her about Lydia.

She had to put a hand on the wall as I spoke. Then she backed into my room and plopped down on the bed. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. I would have helped you. With all of it.”

“I didn’t want you to help me,” I said. “I wanted you to be safe.”

She raised her eyebrows and gave me an angry look. “You think I want to just live a clueless, stupid life while you’re out there suffering? Are you out of your mind?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Believe me, I’ve considered it.”

She pulled me down and wrapped her arm around me, resting her head on my shoulder. “I can’t be happy if you aren’t happy. I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself for me.”

“But you have a chance to be normal,” I said. “And I don’t think I do.”

“Well, I don’t want it,” she said, with a decisive shake of her head. “I don’t want to be normal.”

I was overcome by emotions, but for once I didn’t burst into tears. I just sat there feeling somehow like I was the little sister and she was the big sister. She was the protector and I was the one who needed protecting.

“Now,” she said, “tell me absolutely everything.”

So I did. I started with the bright light and the girl—Laina—taking control of Mom’s car, and I told her everything that had happened since then.

She stopped me sometimes and asked questions, which I answered as well as I could. She was trying to work out a way for us to get into Jared’s closet.

“Stop,” I said. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

The rumble of the garage door.

“Mom’s home,” I said.

Kasey ran to my window. “Lexi…”

“What?” I said.

“It’s not just Mom. It’s Dad, too.” She turned to look at me. Her face was white. “And Agent Hasan.”

We stared at each other.

“She’s going to take you to Harmony Valley,” Kasey said. “Like she took me.”

Harmony Valley was a mental institution located in the middle of nowhere, about fifty miles outside of Surrey. It was where Kasey had spent almost her whole eighth grade year.

“I know,” I said, because I did. The moment Kasey said her name, I knew why she had come. “I—I could run.”

“You can’t run,” she said. “She’ll find you.”

I guess I knew that, too. “But you can run. Don’t ever let them know we’ve talked about this.”

“Tell her nothing,” my sister said. “Not a thing. She’ll act like she’s your friend, but she’s not.”

“Go! Hide!” I snapped, steering my sister toward her bedroom.

“No, I’ll leave,” she said. “I’ll go out through the backyard.”

I followed her to the kitchen and opened the door for her, wanting to shove her out to safety. But she stopped on the threshold and hugged me.

“Keep quiet, behave, and she’ll have to let you go,” she said. “Eventually.”

“Don’t come see me. I don’t want her to think you know about any of this.” Suddenly, a cold line of fear went up my back. “And Kasey, don’t try to deal with Laina alone. Promise me.”

“I promise.” She kissed my cheek and ran off through the backyard. She could hide in the side yard until everyone was inside, and then she could get out of the neighborhood.

But me?

I was stuck.

Mom’s face was gray. She rubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands and stared down at the floor. Dad sat next to her, looking at me.

I was across from them, and Agent Hasan stood over us all.

She was oddly non-smug.

“You can’t just take her,” Mom said.

I saw the way Agent Hasan’s mouth opened to answer, and then she stopped herself.

There was really no need to say it: she could. Just like when she’d hauled Kasey away.

Two hours earlier, she’d come in the door bearing a file of official-looking legal papers that had silenced my parents. While I waited on the couch, she sat at the kitchen island with them, and occasional phrases rose above the murmur of their low voices: Danger to herself and others. Evaluation and treatment. Signed by the judge. But even if Agent Hasan hadn’t had her stack of papers, I would have believed that she could “just take” me. As far as I could see, that was her whole mode of operating: “just” doing things. And never facing the consequences.

Dad leaned forward to straighten a stack of perfectly straight coasters on the coffee table. “How long are you thinking she might be…away?”

Agent Hasan shook her head. “There’s no way of knowing. That information tends to reveal itself after the initial evaluation period.”

Mom and Dad didn’t ask what kind of evaluations were included in that period. And I didn’t either. After all, Kasey had gone through them and survived.…Then again, for all her ill-advised ghost involvement, Kasey was just a regular girl; she didn’t have haunted eyes like mine.

Maybe I’d end up as a taxidermied specimen in some top-secret government science lab.

“Alexis, if there’s anything you want to tell us…” my mother said. “Maybe there’s another way to deal with—with whatever you’re going through.”

But I wouldn’t tell them a thing. The less they knew, the better. I was positive about that. Ignorance is bliss, and the opposite of ignorance is the opposite of bliss.

Agent Hasan’s presence implied that there was something supernatural going on. But my parents didn’t ask for details. Maybe, in the backs of their minds, they somehow connected me to the missing girls.

Maybe they were afraid to ask.

Because I hadn’t once claimed to be innocent of anything.

Agent Hasan checked her watch. “We should probably get going. Alexis, if you want to pack some clothes, maybe some books…nothing electronic, please.”

I nodded and walked to my bedroom, grateful to have orders to follow so I didn’t have to think. I pulled a bag out of my closet and started putting clothes in it—jeans, T-shirts, pajamas—the comfortable loungey stuff Kasey had worn during her ten months away.

Would I be gone for ten months?

Or longer?

Like…forever?

I SAT ALONE IN THE BACKSEAT of Agent Hasan’s car while she drove. About forty-five minutes later, we headed down a long twisting road that went through a small tree-lined canyon and past a couple of horse farms.

A black iron gate opened to let us pass beyond the tall fence that bordered Harmony Valley. We parked at the back of the building.

Would people at school—would Jared and Megan—even know what had happened to me, or would I just disappear like a political prisoner in some second-world country? Kasey might tell Megan, but I doubted she would call Jared.

A man in gray pants and a lab coat came out the double doors, flanked by two massive orderlies. The man spoke to Agent Hasan, and then she came and opened my car door.

“Let’s go,” she said.

I kept my arms folded in front of me and followed her inside.

* * *

Harmony Valley was a private facility. The main lobby and visitors’ lounge were nice, if a little generic—kind of like a hotel for business travelers. Visiting Kasey, we’d never crossed into the area where the patients spent their time living, eating, studying, watching TV, and attending therapy. So I’d always assumed the rest of the building was as nice as the parts we saw.

Wrong.

I followed Agent Hasan down a hallway painted in an ultraglossy shade of two-day-old oatmeal. The ceilings were striped with fluorescent lights, and the floor was an endless line of mismatched linoleum tiles. Every twenty feet or so we passed a solid-looking door with a small wire-reinforced window. Each one had a small numeric keypad instead of a lock. I slowed minutely to try to see inside some of the rooms.

“Keep up,” Agent Hasan said over her shoulder.

At the end of the hall was a windowless door with a sign on it that read privaTe. Agent Hasan shielded the keypad with her body and typed a series of numbers. The door opened with a mechanical click, and we walked in.

The room was sparsely furnished, with a line of counters against one wall, a hospital-type bed in the center, and a table with two chairs on either side pushed back in the corner.

Agent Hasan glanced at me. “On the bed.”

“No, thank you.”

“Alexis.” Her tone was heavy with warning and impatience.

“I’m not getting in the bed,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’ll sit in a chair like a normal person.”

“Normal person?” She laughed humorlessly and gave me an exasperated look. “Go ahead, then. Sit.”

So I did, edging myself into the chair in the corner—the one that faced the door.

A second later, Agent Hasan came over and sat opposite me. “So. Want to tell me what’s going on?”

I didn’t look up. Based on Kasey’s advice, I had a brilliant plan, which was to ignore her questions for all eternity, if necessary.

“Did you know that the only signs of struggle on Elliot Quilimaco’s body are your handprints?”

I flinched at the mention of Elliot’s name. “I believe it.”

“Do you admit to manhandling her?”

I raised my eyes. “I had no choice.”

She leaned closer, coming in for the kill. “How’d you find her, Alexis? How did you know where she was?”

“She liked Maxwell Canyon,” I said. “She hiked there all the time.”

“What about Ashleen?” she said. “And Kendra?”

“Same as Elliot,” I said. “They knew those trails.”

Her lips turned down. “Kendra was found a mile and a half off the trail.”

I channeled all my energy into counting the scratches on the table in front of me. If I let my attention waver for even a moment, I lost count and had to start again.

“Look, I don’t care,” Agent Hasan said. “I’m trying to make this easier on you. But if you don’t want to accept my assistance, it’s no skin off my back.”

I remembered what Kasey had said—She’ll act like she’s your friend, but she’s not—and looked up at her, on the verge of saying something snide.

But when I saw the way her sharp eyes were pinned on me, I swallowed my words and went back to studying the tabletop.

Agent Hasan stood up, the feet of her chair shrieking as she pushed it away from the table. “I think you need a little time to cool off. See you in a while.”

“I hope you don’t mind sharing a room,” Nurse Jean said, pointing to an open door in the hallway.

Inside were two twin beds, each with its own night-stand, and two sets of shelves. The bed farther from the door looked slept-in, and there were a few items on the shelves—some clothes, a couple of magazines, a few books. Everything large enough to hurt somebody was bolted down.

I put my bag on one of the shelves and sat on the unoccupied bed, trying to bounce lightly. But the mattress was about as bouncy as a pile of warm sandwich meat.

“Now, you just get settled. Free time ends in thirty minutes, so you might as well just get ready for bed. We’ll get your medication set up in the morning.”

“Medication?” I repeated. “I don’t think I need any medication.”

She peered at me over the top of her clipboard. “You can talk to your doctor about that tomorrow.”

But I didn’t have a doctor. I wasn’t even sick.

Or was this what Agent Hasan meant when she said she “takes care” of problems?

Face it. If I tried to tell the truth—that I was only there because a top-secret government agent knew I was somehow involved with a ghost and a string of killings—people would just assume I’d come to the right place.

Was this what Agent Hasan did so she didn’t have to justify putting people in jail? She dumped the offenders in a mental hospital and kept them too doped up to talk?

“I see you’ve brought some of your own things, but I’ll have to take them and look through your bag before we can leave it with you. So you can just go ahead and sleep in these.” She handed me a hideous pair of loose, salmon-colored cotton pants and a matching V-neck shirt. Then she wished me good night and left, closing the door behind her.

I flopped backward on the bed and stared at the ceiling until my roommate came in.

She had brown hair cut bluntly to her chin and a thin, long face. She looked less than thrilled to be sharing a room. “I’m Haley,” she said, sounding like the basic act of talking to me required a huge sacrifice on her part.

“Alexis,” I said.

“So…do me a favor,” she said. “Just don’t try to stab me in the middle of the night, or anything, okay?”

I didn’t know how to react to that. Was it a joke? Had her previous roommate tried to stab her?

“You know…” she prompted, “if the voices say, ‘Stab your roomie,’ at least give me a head start. Maybe we should switch beds so I can be closer to the door.”

“Voices?” I said. “What voices?”

Now she looked alarmed.

Then I remembered what our cover story had been when Kasey was locked up: that she had schizophrenia and heard voices in her head telling her what to do. That was probably what the kids here were being told about me.

Don’t worry, I thought about saying. I’m not schizophrenic. I’m just being stalked by the ghost of my boyfriend’s dead girlfriend. Yeah—that would make me sound sane.

“I mean…I don’t hear any right now,” I said. “I’m on a good run.”

A few minutes later, as Haley and I were getting ready for bed, Nurse Jean came back with a tiny paper cup. “This just got called in for you,” she said, handing it to me.

I caught Haley trying to get a glimpse at the contents of the cup.

I gazed down at four pills—a blue one, a pink one, a black-and-white one, and a tiny white one. Quite a mix. “What are they?”

“I don’t have that information,” Nurse Jean said, shaking her head. “But I’m sure your doctor discussed it, didn’t he? And you can always ask him about it tomorrow.”

“I don’t have a doctor,” I said. I had a government agent who was trying to lock me away like a problematic mouse in a trap.

Jean gave me a quick smile, and I realized she thought I was just being crazy. Of course everyone here had a doctor. That’s how you got here—if you were a regular person, that is.

“But what if I don’t want to take any pills?” I asked.

She sighed. “First, we have a little talk about what our shared goal is here at Harmony Valley. Which is healing, naturally.”

Or shutting people up. “And then?”

“Then I inform you that, as an involuntary patient, you are technically required to take any medication prescribed to you by your doctor.”

It made my skin crawl to think that Agent Hasan had decided that I had to take these pills—and I didn’t even get to know what they were.

“And then?”

“And then we strap you down and deliver the medication by injection.” She said this last bit with the same unbending cheerfulness as the rest.

I swallowed the pills.

Haley seemed relieved.

I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. By the time I got back to the room, my thoughts were turning fuzzy, and I was practically swaying on my feet. Nurse Jean saw me and came to help me into bed.

“What was in those pills?” I asked. “What are they for?”

“I imagine your doctor will discuss those details with you,” Jean said, checking the chart on the door. “Most likely just a little help getting to sleep.”

I nodded. They were working, all right. My mind was loose and slow. “Feels like being drunk.”

“I don’t know about that.” Jean smirked as she helped me lie down. “I guess it depends on what you’ve been drinking.”

“Wine?”

“Maybe if you take your wine with a shot of tranquilizers.” She pulled the covers over me and tucked them under my chin.

The next few days were uneventful—or maybe they only seemed that way because the drug-induced lethargy never seemed to leave my system. I spent a lot of time feeling unmotivated and loopy. Apparently, whatever it took to be accepted by Haley and her friends, I wasn’t doing. So I ate, lounged, and watched TV alone. But it didn’t bother me.

It also didn’t bother me that I could never quite get my mind to focus on Laina. Every time I tried to think about it, I got distracted. Usually by a TV show, which turned into a string of TV shows, which led to mealtime and bedtime and the usual succession of distrustful looks from Haley and then my cup of pills.

Still no sign of Agent Hasan.

My parents came for a visit, but it didn’t stand out in my memory. Pretty much a lot of sad-dog faces and apologies, even though they hadn’t done anything wrong. They brought me presents—a couple of books, raspberry-scented lotion, comfortable T-shirts, and yoga pants. Kasey sent her love, they said—looking disappointed in my sister’s apparent callousness at not showing up in person. But I was glad she’d stayed away.

No therapy for me, group or otherwise. And while I was too drugged to be acutely worried, it did occur to me that if this went on much longer, I might really go crazy.

But at least Laina seemed to be appeased. A week into my stay, there had been no new missing girls, and I hadn’t had any purple dress dreams. Maybe my being locked away was just as good as my being dead.

On the seventh or eighth day, I was sitting on the couch, dividing my attention (poorly) between a talk show and a game of checkers that was progressing a couple of feet away from me, when the nurse called my name. “Alexis?”

I looked around, my eyes finally settling on her.

“Visitor,” she said.

My parents again? Maybe Kasey? I shot to my feet, glad to have a distraction from the endless lack of distractions.

But it wasn’t my family. It was Jared.

In spite of my loneliness and boredom, I stopped at the threshold of the visitors’ lounge and considered turning back. All I could think when I looked at him was that wherever he was, Laina would be too. And she would be waiting and watching for a chance to get rid of me—or somebody else.

But his smile was so warm, his eyes so sweetly anxious—and I was so close to falling into a pit of loneliness—that I found myself disarmed. I walked toward the love seat where he was waiting. He stood up and moved to hug me.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “No physical contact.”

“Of course,” Jared said, like he was an old pro at this. “Sorry.”

I was already sitting. I didn’t really like to be on my feet too long. My meds made me dizzy.

Jared turned to me, his face etched with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Who told you I was here?”

“Your sister.”

Right. Except…there was something wrong with that, wasn’t there?

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s fine here. Totally…fine.”

I was a little light-headed and a lot confused. I had a pretty distinct memory of Jared booting me from his house when he thought I was defaming Laina’s memory, and yet here he was, acting as if we were right back to normal. And what exactly was “normal” for us, anyway?

Did he know about Elliot? Yes, of course he did. Why didn’t he ask about her? Or tell me how sorry he was?

Why didn’t he ask why I came to Harmony Valley?

Ask me why I’m here, said the back-of-my-head voice.

Or maybe…was I remembering wrong? Had there been a text, a phone call?

No—there hadn’t been anything like that. He’d been furious that night.

So why wasn’t he mad anymore? And—Wait, what was the other question?

My cupful of pills was doing more than just putting me to sleep at night. It was stirring my thoughts like cake mix.

Jared reached out and took my hand. I stiffened, waiting for the nurse to say something, but she didn’t notice.

“When you get out,” he said, “things are going to be different. I know I’m over the top sometimes, but it’s really important to me to try to work things out.”

I stared at him, thinking, Why? I knew how crazy it must have sounded when I’d gone to him to talk about Laina. And I could only imagine how much it had hurt him to hear me accuse her—her ghost—of being a murderer. If the shoes had been turned—I mean, if the tables had been turned—stupid pills—I would have been just as angry.

So why wasn’t he angry anymore?

All of that trickled through my head, but none of it made it out of my mouth. Instead, I said, “Um…okay.”

He smiled. “I wish I could kiss you.”

I was actually really glad he couldn’t.

“Alexis! Who’s this?”

I looked up and saw Haley, who hadn’t so much as said good morning or good night to me since the first night. She was on her way back to the rec room, but she paused in front of us and gave Jared a vivid smile.

“Um, Jared. My…”

“Boyfriend,” Jared said.

Haley’s eyes went as round as basketballs. “Wow, you’re so nice to visit Alexis. I mean, a lot of guys wouldn’t stick around once their girlfriends went…you know.”

“Yes, well, nice to meet you.” Jared turned toward me, angling himself so Haley was talking to the back of his shoulder.

“You too!” Then she toodle-oo’d off through the double doors.

Jared didn’t even seem to notice her leave. “I really mean it. When you get out, everything will be better.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t counting my when-I-get-out chickens until they hatched. As far as I was concerned, there weren’t even any when-I-get-out eggs lying around.

His hands squeezed mine. “What we have is special.

And I’m not going to let that go. Yes, I was mad at you that night, Alexis, but that’s because I didn’t understand. And you didn’t understand, either.”

“But why didn’t you ever tell me about her?” I asked.

“You didn’t ask. Besides, the whole thing was, you know, horribly painful. Why would I talk about it?”

Because she was a huge part of your life and she died, maybe? But I didn’t say it. I could hear the tension behind what he was saying. “What didn’t I understand?”

He lowered his voice. “What she’s doing.”

I grabbed my hands away. “What who’s doing? What do you mean?”

He smiled warmly.

“Jared, do you mean you believe me about Laina? You think she’s doing something? Her…” I glanced around. “Her ghost?”

He leaned in close to me, and I couldn’t escape the laser beams of his dark brown eyes. “I think she is, Alexis. I think I figured it out. See—we were supposed to be together forever, her and me.”

I stared at him.

“But that’s never going to happen, right? So here’s what I think: she didn’t want me to be alone.” He reached up and caressed the side of my face. “So she found me you instead.”