I stare off at nothing once she disappears to their bedroom. Scar tissue scars differently, rougher and thicker and more noticeable than the original. Scarred scars tear easier. Each layer heals uglier and uglier, covering the previous but not with a neon lion or panicked man. They build on the last wound and embed its memory deeper.

While I clean and bandage my arm in the bathroom, I spare a glance in the mirror. The swelling and redness creep up from my cheekbone to my eye, no way of hiding it.

The need to escape builds to a point of overwhelm, and this time I get all the way to the window with my contingency bag. Only I pause for too long with my hands on the frame, think too much about the unknown.

I let the strap of my bag fall off my shoulder. It hits the floor, and I pull my headboard away from the wall. Lowering down, I run my fingers over the Sharpie words, smooth and tethering, even if his voice has faded from them.

You can always run to me, darlin’. Escape for a while and then weather your storm.

I unzip my contingency bag that I always keep hidden and ready for the worst. I pull the velvet pouch from the inside pocket, but I leave my dad’s SD card inside—the only thing I have left of him. I took it from his camera after his funeral, and in seven years, I’ve never even looked at the pictures. It feels too final to see the last things he captured. Like there could be more, so long as I don’t witness the end.

Like I can still run to him when it all becomes too much.

I pull my phone off the nightstand. Reality needs to fuck off until I can breathe again.

Even after calculating the time difference, I text my new favorite escape.

Show me something beautiful.

11

FOSTER

I cast a glance at my phone’s screen when it vibrates against the wrought-iron bistro table beside me. Rather uncommitted considering it’s three in the morning, but then I see the name. Suddenly a lot of me feels committed.

Remi Saint has become an intrusive thought, nudging her way in where she doesn’t belong. This woman hijacks my mind and steers me in directions I’ve never wanted to go, but I go every time.

Fucking siren, I swear. I haven’t even seen her face or much of her at all. Her raspy voice, though, and the things she says with it. How she frames the world anytime she sends a video speaks to a part of me that wants to find the nuances and extraordinary in the mundane.

I’m an agreeable hostage at this point.

Of course the jackass on the other side of the table swipes my phone before I can.