Chapter 22

I’d stared at those numbers for a long time.

I hadn’t even bothered to go inside with Reid’s letter. I’d read it right there on the sidewalk, alone, through a blurry sea of tears, and when I finished I’d read it all again. Then I’d taken out my phone, bypassing every single worthless notification on it.

I may not know much about numbers, but I know, in spite of what he kept hidden from me, everything I need to know about Reid.

And so he’d been right. The numbers were easy for me to decode.

And they’d told me what to do next.

From the passenger seat of the last rental car on the lot, a creaky, amenities-limited two-door Ford, Sibby reads off directions to me, occasionally getting distracted by her repeated fiddling with the radio, an old habit that used to make me grind my teeth in frustration back when we were teenagers. Now I’m too nervous, too focused to care much. Crammed into the tiny backseat is Lark, my phone held up to her ear as she talks to Lachelle. “She didn’t let us see it,” she’s saying, and I think I can hear Lachelle’s shout of protest from here. “I know,” Lark says.

“Tell her we’ll call back,” I say. “I think we’re getting close.” I jut out an elbow to dislodge Sibby’s arm from where she’s toying with the tuner again, trying to find something worth singing to. “What next?” I ask her.

With the help of Sibby’s Google Mapped directions, it’s only a few more turns before I’m pulling into the lot of a nice but nondescript-looking hotel in New Jersey, one of those ones with “suites” for extended stays.

“This is it?” says Lark, poking her head between the seats and ducking to peer out of the windshield.

“It has to be it,” I answer.

“Jersey,” Sibby says. “Why would they bring him here?”

“Cam did this movie once about witness protection,” Lark says. “Maybe it’s that.”

“He’s not going into witness protection,” I say, but I guess I don’t really know. “Anyway, they’d take him farther away than Jersey for that.” Barely two hours, I reassure myself, thinking back over the drive here. I’m sure he’s quite safe.

I unbuckle my seat belt and open my door, but Sibby stops me with a hand on my forearm. “Want to check your hair first?”

I roll my eyes, but also I flip down my visor and check my reflection in the tiny, cloudy mirror there. Listen, it is definitely not great, but it’s also not as though Reid cited normal-sized eyelids or brushed hair as a reason he loves me.

He loves me.