I opened my eyes. She’d turned herself perpendicular, and her tiny, soft foot was flush against my stomach.

I reached down and felt the outline of my phone case on the floor and turned off my alarm. I didn’t remember putting it there.

Trevor. I was already playing it out. He’d woken at the crack of dawn to beat rush hour.

When he’d been scurrying through the kitchen, gathering his briefcase and making his coffee for the road, he’d found my phone drowning in a puddle of cords at our charging station. So, he’d set my alarm, snuck in quietly, and placed it on the floor beside me. Thoughtful.

7:02 a.m. I had two hours to get Em to school.

Trevor was long gone. Sawyer’s bus came at seven, so he was gone by now too, which I felt bad about. His first day of school, a junior at a new high school, and his stepmom didn’t even get up to wish him luck, to make him a quick plate of scrambled eggs, or give him five bucks for lunch.

I could imagine him, pouring cornflakes into a big bowl, overpouring his milk as always, and scooping it into his mouth as he stared out at the wide green backyard and thought of his birth mom. She had been arrested for theft at Nordstrom, stealing a Louis Vuitton, and sentenced to three months in Cook County’s Women’s Correctional. It would have been hilarious had it not been so sad.

You have to do better by him.

My arms and ankles itched as if I’d rolled down a grassy hill. I hadn’t bothered with a bath last night.

Sun burned softly through the curtains, easing Em’s room into daylight, but she might sleep another half hour. I rolled out of her bed slowly, stealthy as a cat, and closed the door behind me.

Keeping the bathroom lights off, I turned the faucet to hot, peeled off my clothes, and lowered myself in.

I squirted Sawyer’s body wash into the water, inhaling deeply—the masculine, spicy scent relaxed me. A faint smear of red-brown stained my palm. Blood. I scrubbed it away. I laid my head back on the ledge and closed my eyes.

Last night.

The warm, cushy comfort of lingering sleep fell away. My pulse quickened, and worry gnawed at me.

You hit a dangerous man with a steel flashlight. How much you wanna bet his head is throbbing right now and he’s cursing you?

Last night.

Desiree’s words played in my mind. Oh, and I didn’t kill your mom. In case that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not violent. I’ve never killed anyone.

As if those last two statements were bound. Cause and effect. They weren’t.