Instead of going straight back to the hospital, I decide to stop by my apartment and get a few things. A notebook to write in, a copy of The Outlander, a book I’ve been reading on and off for some time now and my iPad. I need the iPad in case I want to watch some Netflix on something other than my phone or my laptop - the phone is too small and the laptop is too unwieldy.

When I get into the lobby, I get an uneasy feeling down in the pit of my stomach. Agh, I have to take another Diclegis pill. It’s wearing off. I fish around for my keys and walk inside. I head straight to the kitchen to wash down the pill with a glass of water.

“Hello, Ellie.” A cold, familiar voice sends shivers down my spine. I know who it is without even turning around.

“Are you surprised to see me?” he asks. My shoulders scrunch up all on their own and a thick mass of tension settles just below my neck.

“What are you doing here, Blake?”

“I just wanted to come see you. You know, for old times sake,” he says. When I turn around, I come face-to-face with a disheveled man on the brink of collapse. His hair is out of control and so are his clothes. His eyes look frantic and terrified, yet mean all at the same time. He is pointing a gun at me.

“We don’t have any old times sake to share, Blake,” I say. I stand back, leaning against the kitchen counter. I don’t know what to do, but I need to come up with a plan. Fast.

“Aren’t you curious how I got here?” he asks, waving the gun around in his hand.

I shrug. I don’t know whether it’s best to agree with him or to argue.

“What are you doing here, Blake?” I repeat my original question.

“I heard that the cops are looking for me. You know, for shooting Aiden. How is he again?”

His question pierces me through my heart. How dare he ask me about Aiden? How dare he say his name at all?

And then, all out of the blue, I have an idea. My purse is the crossover kind and it’s draped behind me. I turn away from him slightly so that he can’t see what I’m doing from behind the kitchen island. When I’m certain that he can’t see me, I reach in and bury my hand inside. I search for my phone.

“He’s fine,” I say. “No thanks to you.” I say these words, but my thoughts go back to my phone and the task at hand. All I need to do is remember how to turn the recorder on. I just looked it up a few days ago. I thought it might be a good idea to record my outline for my writing rather than typing it out. Okay, now, try to remember, Ellie. You did it before. What buttons did you press?

“Oh, c’mon,” Blake says, taking a few steps toward me. “You’re not really mad about that.”

To record, I have to open the Voice Memos app. I try to remember where it was visually on the screen because I can’t exactly look down and find it without him noticing.

“You don’t think I should be?” I ask.

Blake turns away from me. Quickly, I look down at my phone and press on the App Store button. Then I search for Voice Memo and press open.

“How did you get in here?” I ask, pressing on the big red button to record. Just as I drop the phone back into my purse and press my hands on the island for him to see them, Blake says, “Oh, you know, it’s amazing what you can find on YouTube these days.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “One of your nice neighbors let me in when I told them that I forgot my key and then I picked your lock.”

“You picked my lock? How?”

“I watched a few YouTube videos. Not all of them are useful, you know. Some are total crap.”

I take a deep breath. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but at least I’m recording it. Now, I need to think of a way out of this.

“You shot Aiden,” I say. “Didn’t you?”

“Of course, I did,” Blake says nonchalantly. “I mean, who the hell do you think shot him?”

My heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach. The way he just admitted that. There’s a desperation in his voice. And that’s never a good thing to hear.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” I say before I get a chance to catch myself.

“It’s the end, Ellie. There’s no reason to lie at the end.”

My hands grow cold when I hear that. No. This is not the end for me. I need to do something. I need to save myself and my baby. No matter what.

“The cops are going to be here any minute,” I finally say.

“No, they’re not. They have no idea that I’m here. They’re looking for me, but they don’t know where I could be.”

He’s right, of course. Shit. Okay, think, Ellie. Think.

“There’s no point, Ellie,” Blake says as if he can read my mind. “There’s nothing you can do.”

No, he’s wrong, I say to myself. He didn’t think I could record this whole conversation and here I am doing it. No, there’s a lot I can do. I just have to think of it first. And while I do, I have to make him talk.

“Can I ask you something, Blake? What happened between you and Aiden?”

Blake turns around. The expression on his face tells me that he never expected that question, but he’s pleasantly surprised.

“I’m going to tell you the truth,” he says after a moment. “I mean, nothing else really matters now, right?”

I wait.

“I’ve always been jealous of Aiden. He was one of my closest friends at Yale. And I always loved him. But he had things easier than I did. And I hated him for it at the same time.”

Okay, I say to myself. Just keep him talking until you figure something out.

“Why?” I ask.

“Well, he wasn’t rich like me. My parents had these large, overgrown, ridiculous houses with housekeepers and staff. But the thing is that when you’re a little kid, you don’t care about any of that. You just want your parents.”

“And you didn’t have that?”

“Nope. My parents just had each other. They spent all their time traveling and they always left me with grandparents, nannies, or whoever.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I say. I mean it as a lie but it’s not really one. I am actually sorry. It’s little shit like this that really throws people off and ruins their childhoods. And then they take their broken childhoods out on other people. Like Aiden and me. Fuck his parents!

“I wanted you from the first time I saw you,” Blake says. “At the auction. But of course, Aiden got to you first. And I was his friend so I had to go along with it. Do you know how much I hated that?”

“No, not really,” I say.

“Aiden hated his parents. He never thought they loved him, but he didn’t know how good he had it. Just like with you. He’s such an asshole. What the hell do you see in him, Ellie?”

I shrug. I don’t really know how to respond, but luckily he doesn’t wait for the answer.

“I was so happy to get his job. I finally got something that I deserved. But then they took that away from me. All because the stock price started to drop. I tried to implement his advertising strategy but I didn’t know how. And then you two got together again. So, what it did it all matter?”

He is glossing over big swaths of what had happened between us, but I don’t dare bring that up. I’m putting my own plan into motion.

“Blake, please let me go. I’m pregnant. Please. I won’t tell anyone that you were here. But please, just let me go.”

“You’re pregnant?”

“It just happened. It was an accident.”

“And you’re keeping it?”

“I don’t know yet,” I lie. I don’t really know what answer is going to make all of this worse for me.

“Does Aiden know?”

“Aiden is…dead.” The word just escapes my lips all of a sudden. It’s not planned. It just sort of slips out. Maybe if he thought that Aiden was dead then he would leave me alone? Maybe then he wouldn’t have anyone to be jealous of?

“Blake, I won’t say anything about you being here. But you have to go. The cops are looking for you. Just go away. Drive away as far as possible from New York as you can. Go to Mexico. Start over again on some beach.”

I talk and slowly inch my way toward the utensils drawer at the center of the island. When he casts his eyes down to the floor, I act fast. I open the drawer and grab a knife. But within seconds, Blake is next to me. He tries to grab the knife out of my hand. We start to wrestle. As I push back on him, I see that he left the gun on the kitchen island and I lean against him and swat the gun away. It flies across the room, giving me at least some sort of shot at living through this.

Blake slams my hand onto the counter, knocking the knife out of it. Then he presses his hands around my throat and starts to squeeze. My airway is completely blocked. I can’t breathe in or out. I don’t have much time. My hands are free and I feel around for something to grab. When I find it, I wrap my fingers around it and plunge it into his throat. Blood squirts everywhere, covering my face with a thick gooey substance. He lets go of my throat and I collapse onto the floor. It takes me a few moments to catch my breath. When I finally do, I hear a scary gurgling sound coming from somewhere nearby. I throw up and everything turns to black.