The driver had gotten out and helped me up. He’d actually helped me all the way to the front door and unlocked it. I remembered standing there with him on the stoop as he fumbled with my keys, unsure of which one fit the lock.

The embarrassment flooded over me, and I had a moment of thanks that there were still some good people in the world. The fact that I’d managed to make it to my own bed still seemed like a miracle.

“Paula?”

That part of me that wanted to tell him the truth, to tell him I was doing this all for us, was too tired, or maybe just too scared, and it curled up under the covers, away from the unforgiving daylight. I wanted to burrow down with it.

So instead of lying more, I avoided it all. I let my heavy eyelids droop some more, and a moment later, I wasn’t pretending at all.

“Paula?” I heard him say tiredly. He waited a few moments, and then I was vaguely aware of him spinning around and moving toward the door.

As I drifted into sleep, I heard him speak again, the words barely making it into my consciousness.

“Oh yeah, you might not remember it, but you only came home with one shoe,” he said. “That red pair you really like. You sat on the bed and cried about it for five minutes before you passed out. So…just so you know.”

But I didn’t know anything of the sort, because by the time he’d finished speaking, I was once again dead to the world.

• • •

I hadn’t hurt my face when I fell out of the cab. That fall had given me only a slight scrape on my knee, which I would barely notice the next day due to my other ailments.

It had taken me drifting back into sleep to remember what really happened the night before to cause the massive, blue-green bruise on the side of my face.

Ryan Hooks’s face appeared again when I dozed off.

One moment, he was in the back seat of my car, and I felt the same warmth I’d felt the night I’d picked him up. In the dream, he was a little more charming, a little more handsome, and even a little taller than he’d been that night, and I drove with both eyes on him in the rearview mirror, even though I knew I should be looking at the road. I knew there was another car coming—we were moments away from crashing, I could feel it—but I stayed focused on him, our gazes locked.

I could see the other car approaching the nose of my own, and right before the collision, it all disappeared, and suddenly, I was lying on the carpet in Emma’s apartment again.