—
A half hour later, still sweating, even after the coldest shower in the history of cold showers, I stood in the bedroom of my trailer and considered doing something I’d never done before:
Dropping the towel and lying down naked across my bed so the breeze coming through the screens would blow right across my hot body.
My naked body.
Because I could do that. No one was here to care. Or stop me.
I put my fingers against my neck. It was a sick habit, but I caught myself pressing my thumb against the worst of the bruises—just until it hurt again.
A reminder. An anchor…Don’t move too fast, Annie. Remember where you’re from.
Crouching down slightly, I caught sight of the world outside when the breeze came through the window. What if someone was standing right there? Just when the wind blew and someone saw me…naked on the bed?
The chances were minuscule. The idea ludicrous, surrounded as I was by walls of metal. Thin metal—but still.
The truth was I was more self-conscious alone than I was with other people.
In the end, twenty-four years of conditioning won out. Defeated, slightly ashamed of myself, I got dressed.
Annie McKay, you’re just not the kind of person who lies down naked in her bed in the middle of the day.
In the drawer next to my bed was the phone programmed with only one number. Dylan. I felt the world in a new way these days. Since pulling myself up off the floor and leaving my life behind. I was new.
And I wanted to call Dylan.
And I was terrified of that. Terrified of what it meant. About me, about my decision-making. All of it. Everything about Dylan felt risky.
Calling him was an invitation to something dangerous.
Not yet, I heard his voice in my head, that dark purr. But soon.
There was a knock on my trailer door and I jumped like a scalded cat, yanked from my utterly impure thoughts.
“Hey, Annie. I think a package arrived for you.” It was Kevin outside my door. Just Kevin. I put a hand against my throat and felt my heart pounding hard.
“There’s got to be a mistake,” I said, opening the door. “There isn’t anyone who would send me a package.”
“Well,” he said, looking down at a small box, wrapped in regular post-office brown paper. “It’s addressed to ‘Layla-slash-the new cleaning lady.’ And you’re the closest thing I got to a cleaning lady around these parts.”
Layla.
That box was from Dylan.
Kevin held it out toward me but I couldn’t get my hands to move. I could barely get my lungs to move. He’d sent me something.
“You want me to pitch it?” he asked, dropping his hand to his side with a shrug.
“No!” I cried. “No, I’ll…I’ll take it.”
Of course I would take it.
It was a package from a man I could not stop thinking about. It was a bad idea, I got that, but what was just one more bad idea? I was kind of on a roll these days.
“Here you go.” He handed it to me and left, walking back across the dirt path to the other side of the trailer park.
I closed the door and put the box down on the table and slid into the settee. The handwriting on the top was a woman’s handwriting. Weird. But whatever.
I grabbed a knife from my drawer and slid it between the edges of the cardboard, cutting open the brown tape that sealed it shut.
Inside was a phone charger. And a note.
For the phone. For emergencies, the note read in very different handwriting than what had been on the box. This was a man’s handwriting. Sharp and slashing across the white paper in dark ink.
I hope you are all right.
A phone charger. For emergencies. The breath I’d been holding shuddered hard out of me. I had no idea what I thought was going to be in there, but a phone charger was not it. I grabbed the note and phone from my cupboard and went into my bedroom where I plugged the charger into the wall and hooked it up.
Manners dictated I say thank you. I had to contact him.
You know, because of manners.