Her eyes shone as I stepped away from the door, and I knew then that she never planned to contact me. I turned away, a lump in my throat and hurried toward my car. I’d almost reached it when Dan stepped out of the shadows. After gasping, I asked what the hell he was doing there.

Dan’s gaze slid past me to the apartment I came out of and he said, “I can’t believe you.”

There was no convincing him I hadn’t slept with Mitch. In his mind, Mitch was the ex I couldn’t get over. He kept saying that he always knew my heart belonged to someone else. That he’d always felt someone else in the room, standing between us, a beating heart, a heavy breath.

He wasn’t wrong about that part.

My heart had always partially belonged to someone else. Just not the person he thought.

34

SUNDAY, 6:45 A.M.
OVER THIRTY-SEVEN HOURS
AFTER DROP-OFF

LAUREN HAD ALWAYS believed in her memory of that birthmark. It was something she remembered so vividly. It was real. Tangible. Not something she’d made up. She was sure of it.

Her entire life, she’d dreamed of the little girl with milky white skin, puffy cheeks, wide eyes, the pear-shaped tan birthmark on her neck. In her dreams, the child appeared to her at various ages. An infant, a toddler, elementary school–aged. Every time, she’d want to play a game of hide-and-seek. Lauren would cover her face with her hands and count, sometimes peeking out through her splayed fingers.

The little girl would skip away, find a hiding spot.

But even the nights she cheated and peeked through her fingers, Lauren was unable to find the little girl. She’d search behind couches, inside drawers, under cabinets, in piles of blankets. Desperate, she’d scour every room, and often venture outside. Scaling walls, cutting down bushes, tearing apart plants. But in the end, all she was left with was emptiness.

Lauren would awaken to her own screams, skin dampened with cold sweat, pulse ricocheting through her veins.

In her dreams, Lauren never found her.

But in real life, she had.