My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, lips parting to let a small noise slip out against my will. My fingers curl against my palm, my nails too blunt to cut my skin, but still stinging the harder I make a fist. I shake my head.

Christian moves toward me. He touches the pendant nestled in the hollow of my throat. “Nobody would ever know.”

“I would know.” I’ve worn this necklace every day since he gave it to me. With a yank, I tug the chain, breaking it. I hold it out to him, and when he doesn’t take it, I throw it on the floor.

Christian looks at it, then at me, his expression blank. He takes a step back from me. “Well. If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”

“I won’t.”

“If I text you now, you’ll have to answer me. Since you’re my new landlady and all. Right? You can’t just ignore me anymore. Can you?” Christian says with a slide of his tongue over his teeth. He looks around the room and nods firmly. “Leave the keys.”

I toss them on the end table and let myself out. Inside my kitchen, I listen for the sound of my husband. He’s in his office, the closed door sacrosanct, but I can hear his agitated voice talking on the phone even from the top of the stairs. Another closed door greets me in the upstairs hall. When this was my brother’s room, Jonathan played his music loud enough to drive my mother to distraction, but my son’s headphones are a permanent fixture. I press my fingertips to the door for a moment, thinking of knocking, but what’s the point? He won’t hear me. I’d have to pound on it to get his attention, and then what will I say to him? It’s not yet time for dinner. He no longer wants to spend his afternoons playing cards with me or building pillow forts he can jump on and destroy. I’d only earn his scorn.

In my bathroom, I pull out my phone. There was no noise to alert me, but my message app shows a number. I swipe to read the message. I take the number off mute and add the information to my contacts. It’s from Christian, because of course it is, because of course the one time I walk away from Christian Campbell is the time he decides he can’t let me go.

CHAPTER
11

LOOKING FORWARD TO getting reacquainted.

That’s all the text says.

I seek my solace in a shower hot enough to scald. My skin goes pink, then red, beneath the spray. And still I tremble, and I shake, and my teeth clatter together now that I’m no longer clipping the tip of my tongue between them. Laughter, frantic and desperate and without humor, bubbles up and out of me, and I choke it off with a mouthful of water.

The shower runs cold too soon. The water heater is ancient, like the rest of the appliances. They all should be replaced, but the money that spends so easily a dollar at a time, here or there, running like a silk scarf through my fingers, goes to other things.