I listened to Kyra and the other Fairgood wives have one of those legitimate rich people conversations about which charities they were donating to that Christmas. I used to think nothing of pledging four or five figures to some deserving charity for the holidays, too. I’d even considered doing some nonprofit work after I graduated, since it wasn’t like I needed the money.

But that was all before Hades. Now I’m risking asking Wedding Dress Girl for help just to get five thousand dollars.

Anyway, all the Fairgood men and one of their spouses would be sleeping extra-hard that night.

I waited at 11:28 in the rose garden behind the house, still not sure if Wedding Dress Girl would show up. Even if she understood the other parts, there was a chance she would mistake the meet up time for today’s date—which was why I had chosen it.

But to my relief, she actually arrived a couple of minutes early. “By the way, my name is Amira,” she whispered before handing me a pair of yoga pants, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt.

She also handed me the five thousand dollars from Waylon's motorcycle jacket and his iPhone.

Then she called me “so smart” when I cracked Waylon’s lock screen code, ordered an Uber, and paid the guy who showed up two hundred dollars from the wad to drive just the smartphone to the closest bus station and leave it there.

It had been a while since anyone’s complimented me for being smart. Sometimes whole weeks went by where I forgot I had a brain capable of strategy. Hades hadn’t let me do drugs—only drink on special occasions. He’d said he wanted me to feel every moment of his revenge.

But being with him had felt like a drug sometimes—one of the bad trip ones that slowed down time and made everything you looked at extra nightmarish. Remembering I was smart sometimes slipped away from me during days filled with endless humiliations.

Taking several local buses all day to get us across a state line wasn’t so smart though. I’d wanted to get as far away from Nashville as possible, but we ended up missing the bus to Vegas. And Amira, who’d been weirdly calm about the situation, said we should get a hotel room.

It was a setback for sure but hope continued burning in my heart. I prayed like I hadn't since I was a little girl in Catholic school that Hades would buy my phone trick and have no idea where I’d really gone.

But now Waylon's on the other side of the closet door, asking Amira what he told her about crossing him.

I watched him earlier…I watched him snuggle her under his arm and kiss her on top of the head like she actually meant something to him.