I exhaled hard, my body absolutely empty of air. Of anything. I barely had thought left.

“But…” The fucking debt. If I don’t leave her here…

“Tommy,” she whispered. “You said you wouldn’t leave me with someone who would hurt me.”

“And your mother would hurt you?” I asked.

“That’s all my mother has ever done.”

Pest barked. Jada’s mother had left the front step and was walking toward the car, her face set in careful lines, like she knew what we were talking about.

“Please, Tommy. I’m begging you. Don’t leave me here with her.”

Her eyes. Oh…God. Her fucking eyes.

Those eyes weren’t Jada. They were Beth.

She didn’t need to beg.

But I didn’t tell her that.

Without saying anything, I started the car and peeled the fuck out of there, my back wheels kicking up gravel at that fountain. In my rearview mirror I saw Beth’s mom standing in the driveway surrounded in our dust, watching us go.

Probably getting my license plate tags.

“Thank you,” she said, sitting back against the seat as if that had taken all her strength. And it probably had.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “We’re going to have your mother, the cops and Bates after us.”

When Bates caught up to me, it was going to be jail or worse.

And I was so tired I couldn’t even be upset about it. Some part of me figured the moment I’d picked up that envelope, it was over for me. I’d been living my life in suspended animation since that night, waiting for this.

“Give me your phone,” she said, her thin hand reaching forward from the back.

“What are you going to do?”

“Try to get the police off our back, at least.”

Good idea or bad, I had no idea, but I handed the phone to her.

“Hey,” she said after a few seconds. I glanced in the rearview to see her eyes closed, her hands white-knuckled around my phone. “It’s me. I’m borrowing a friend’s phone. No. I’m fine. Well… not fine but okay. Yeah, I can imagine. I’m sorry. I am. I know this is a problem. But…I need your help. I’m sorry. But… can you put out a statement. Just tell people I called an old friend to help me get into rehab. I’m looking into a couple of different places and trying to find the best fit.”

Man, she had to feel like shit, but she was holding it together like a boss while that asshole made her grovel.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s true. I’m not exhausted. I’m on too many fucking drugs. I need some time to clean up. Get myself back to normal.” She sighed. “I don’t know, Sherman. I don’t. A week. I know we’ll lose more dates in Europe. I know. But…I’ll come back so strong I’ll be a different person. Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure you heard that before. But I’m serious. Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

The phone appeared at my shoulder, and I grabbed it, dropping it into the empty cupholder in the middle console.

I should call Simon, I thought. Tell him things had gone south and that he could have my furniture. And I’d finally tell him thank you for taking me to the hospital that night.

I’d tell him when Bates came calling, don’t fuck around—just do the job.

“Coming through,” Beth said as she crawled up into the front seat, her body bumping against mine as she climbed over the console. Pest whimpered, but she made room as Beth collapsed beside her, directing all the vents onto her shaking body.

“Beth—”

“I’m not Beth,” she said. “I’m fucking Jada. And we’re going to have to stop somewhere fast; I’m going to get super sick.”

Three minutes later I was pulled over on the side of the road while she threw up out the passenger-seat door.

“Can I do anything?” I asked.

“Leave me alone for a few minutes,” she snapped, and I grabbed my phone and got out of the car. I whistled for Pest, and she jumped out the driver’s side door to find a cactus to pee on.

I didn’t have to worry about Jada running anywhere. She was too weak. Too sick and didn’t have any shoes. And I wasn’t entirely sure if this was still a kidnapping or not.

I turned my back to the sun and called the number Carissa gave me. I expected to leave a message with the robot voice, but Carissa answered on the second ring.

“You’re late.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed at the back of my neck. My shoulder where Jada had bit me still ached like a fucker. “I guess I am.”

“So?”

“So there’s been a problem.”

“No. No, Tommy, there hasn’t been a problem. There are no problems. There is only you getting Beth to rehab.”

“Her mother was there.”

“Right. That was the point.”

“She begged me not to leave her with her mother. What was I supposed to do?”

“Are you really still this naive?”

“I’m not fucking naive, Carissa. I grew up in the same places you did.”

“And you still believe the addict?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing how that sounded. But I didn’t really think she was an addict. “I believe her. She wants help but not from her mother. If you’d seen her face, Carissa…"

“Oh Tommy. You always were a sucker for the new ones.” I blew out a long breath. “Tommy, this better not be about sex.”

“What?”

“If you’re fucking with her—”

“Fucking with her?” My outrage rang false and I knew it. “She’s coming off who knows what kind of shit.”

“I remember you two when we were kids, you know. Your romance…it felt epic.”

“Carissa—”

“It felt like a fairy tale.” It had. It totally had. “But this isn’t a goddamn fairy tale, and if you are fucking her, I swear to God, Tommy, you won’t have to worry about Bates because I will kill you myself.”

“I’m not…I won’t touch her. But I’m not leaving her with her mother.”

“Well, you are in bit of a pickle, aren’t you, Tommy?” It was almost funny. If it wasn’t my life on the line.

“How much trouble am I in with Bates?”

“That’s between you and Bates, but if you want my professional opinion, don’t come back to San Francisco, and ditch that car.”

And then the line went dead.

I slipped the phone into my pocket and ran my hand over my face and into my hair. My whole body was heavy with weariness. It took so much effort to get myself back to the car, where Beth lay in the passenger seat. Sweating and wretched.

I remembered the feeling all too well.

The urge to take care of her was a tide I couldn’t fight.

“Here’s the plan,” I said, reaching over her to shut the door.

“I’m not going to a hospital,” she said. “She’ll find me in a hospital. And I know you’re not going to believe this, but I’m not that bad. I swear—”

“It’s okay. No hospitals,” I said in my calmest voice, trying to stop her freak-out. My plan had included a hospital, but there were other plans. “You want to tell me about your mom?”

“No.” She laughed. “No. I don’t walk to talk about my mom. Tell me about this plan.”

“I’m going to check us into a hotel. Drop you there. Get rid of the car and then come back.”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “Come back, I mean. How do we end this kidnapping? I release you from this kidnapping? Do I need to sign something that says I no longer want to be kidnapped by you?”

I’d forgotten how funny Beth could be.

Silly even.

I’d felt, all those years ago, as if I was a post and she was some beautiful bougainvillea—not the purple one but the orange one, the one you rarely saw. I gave her a place to grow, and she made me beautiful.

I shook my head. Fuck. I was tired.

And I wasn’t leaving her alone in some hotel room.

“You’re going to be sick,” I said.

She rolled her head to give me the deadest dead eye. “I hadn’t noticed,” she said, and I refused to smile. “But you don’t have to babysit me.”

“It’s not just for you,” I said. “I haven’t slept in a day and a half, and I need to lie low for a while, too.”

“The guy…who got you free?”

“Yeah. He’s not happy with me.”

“I’m not going to apologize.”

“You don’t have to. It was my job. I fucked it up.”

“So, hotel. Lay low. Get better and then…?”

“You go back to your life and I go back to mine.”

She sighed and closed her eyes again. “Deal. But if I puke on you, it’s your own fault.”

An hour later I found a motel off one of the secondary highways. If her mother or Bates were looking for me, it would take some work to find us at the Yucca Family Lodge—swimming pool closed for the season. They offered rooms in the main lodge or cabins you could rent behind the motel. I opted for the cabin at the far edge of the property, checked us in under fake names, said we were there for our honeymoon in the hopes people would leave us alone, paid in cash and got directions for the grocery store in town.

The cabin was about a million times better than I expected. Big vaulted ceilings and hardwood floors. The bathroom was modern, with a tub and shower, and there was even a fireplace on the wall opposite the big queen-size bed. There was a comfortable chair sitting next to the fireplace. An ottoman in front of it. A small table with a lamp beside it.

No television. No neighbors.

Just us.

This would work.

Pest picked her spot on the rug in front of the cold fireplace. I turned up the heat best I could and then went back to get Jada, who was sleeping restlessly in the passenger seat.

“Hey,” I said, unclipping her seat belt. “Jada?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re here.”

“Where?” She fought to open her eyes but kept losing the battle.

“Yucca Family Lodge.”

“Sounds…terrible.”

“Can I… I can carry you,” I offered, but I sounded reluctant to my own ears, like I didn’t want to touch her. I’d pushed her away to protect myself. To keep myself sane in this insane situation.

But the situation kept changing.

“No.” Her eyes flew open and met mine for just a moment. And I saw her think about how she was going to protect herself. And I was embarrassed that I’d pushed her away. Embarrassed maybe that what I used to feel for her was still so alive. And I still didn’t know what to do with it.

I’d never known what exactly to do with Beth.

“I’ll walk,” she said.

“The ground is rough.”

“So am I,” she said and pulled herself out of the car. She walked barefoot over the gravel and pine needles rather than be helped by me. Touched by me.

“Wow,” she said, standing in the doorway, looking at our room. “It’s nice.”

“I was surprised too.”

I got around her into the room and pulled back the thick quilt on the bed. The white sheets and thick pillows looked so tempting, every time I blinked I felt like I was falling asleep.

“You must be tired,” she said. She reached for me as if to stroke my shoulder, and then stopped.

I wasn’t sure what would happen if she touched me. All the very careful control I was exerting would crumble to dust.

In that moment, with both of us standing there like we’d been carved out of granite, I realized how badly I wanted to touch her.

I was dying to touch her again.

I wanted to roll onto that bed with her and hold her.

Like I was sixteen again. Like I’d never stopped being sixteen.

And being touched by her again? I wasn’t sure I could stand it.

“I’m fine,” I lied, jerking myself into motion. Forcing the memories away. Pushing the desire down as deep as I could. “I’m going to run into town, hit a grocery store and see what I can do about the car. Do you have any requests?”

“A new head. A new stomach. Some gum. Skittles.”

I smiled. “I’ll see what I can find.”

She got into bed, sighing with a kind of ecstasy that my exhausted body was deeply jealous of. She caught me staring, and I felt my face get hot, because my thoughts were so far out of my control.

“Oh, Tommy,” she sighed. “You have the worst poker face. You always did. When I feel better, we’ll give it a shot.”

She was talking about sex. About us having sex like it wasn’t a big deal. When for me it was too big a deal. Way too big. I turned to walk away, but she grabbed me.

Her hand in mine. Her fingers curled around my thumb. My walls shook.

“I’m…ah…I’m a little scared,” she said, her smile bravely losing its battle, and it was over for me. Done. I felt like my heart was in my hand where we touched. I was ice everywhere else, but there, where her fingers clung to mine…

Warm.

I touched her, against all my better judgment. I pushed the hair away from her face so I could see into her amber eyes. Red-rimmed and bloodshot, they filled with tears.

“It’s going to be okay,” I told her with so little proof.

“Where have I heard that before?” she asked, her lips curved in a smile or a grimace, I couldn’t be sure. But I flinched anyway because the reminder of how I’d failed her put my walls right back up.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For all of this. For making you stay here. For maybe…I don’t know…getting you in trouble with Bates or whatever. I’m sorry for the graham crackers."

“You weren’t going to apologize, remember?”

“Tommy—”

“Don’t!” I snapped. I felt like I was circling a drain, and I didn’t have a whole lot of strength left. “This isn’t your fault. None of it is.”

I was exhausted. I was stressed and scared. I was worried.

And it was Beth here.

My Beth.

Seven years later and I was locked in this cottage with her with nowhere to run. Nowhere to go.

It was her and me, and I’d dreamed about a version of this more times than I could count.

She’s going to get fucking sick, you degenerate pig.

Right. And that.

“This is my fault. I got you into this mess, Jada,” I said. “You feel like shit because of the drugs, but you’re going to wake up in two days and see that this is pretty much my fault.”

“Oh, that’s right. You kidnapped me.” She smiled a little as she said it.

“I did. I kidnapped you.”

Her breath shuddered and she closed her eyes and I expected to see her cry. I expected tears to stream out from under those outrageous lashes. I expected to watch the tears bathe those freckles I so dearly loved.

“I can’t pretend,” she whispered.

“Pretend what?”

“That I’m not me.” Her eyes opened, those amber eyes so familiar I knew them in my bones. “That you’re not you.”

I blinked and nearly said, very nearly said, I will. I will pretend for both of us.

But I kidnapped her and she felt like shit and it was only going to get worse.

“You don’t have to,” I said and she sighed. She sighed with such relief. Like my words gave her comfort. I regretted them in a heartbeat, and at the same time I regretted that I hadn’t said them earlier. The minute I saw her on that bed in Santa Barbara, I should have told her.

It’s me, Tommy, and I loved you once. I won’t hurt you. I will protect you.

I was ashamed that my instinct had been to turn away from her.

My fingers reached for her face, the a blue curl over her ear. I nearly brushed it back but stopped myself just in time.

No touching. I couldn’t do this and not pretend. I couldn’t do this, not pretend and touch her.

“Go to sleep. I’ll be back.”

She smiled as her eyes fluttered shut. “So bossy. All the time.”

Everything I wanted not to feel, it was here. In the air around us, and she sighed. We were connected. We always had been. Pretending didn’t change anything.

“I’m leaving Pest here,” I told her. “Don’t open that door for anyone. I’m serious. I’ll be back in an hour.” I dragged a garbage can nestled in the corner by the dresser, over to her bed in case she was sick. Which was inevitable. “Get some sleep if you can.”

“Thank you, Tommy.”

“It’s okay…Beth.”

And that was the end of pretending.

---

Town was a long fifteen minutes away and I picked up some necessities at the tiny mom-and-pop grocery store. Gatorade and bottled water. Applesauce and chocolate pudding that didn’t need to be refrigerated. Some loaves of bread and peanut butter and jelly. A bunch of oranges. Kibble for Pest.

I looked at it all on the conveyor belt as I waited to pay and realized it was exactly what Simon and I lived on those first few months in that apartment. It was the diet he’d prescribed because it had protein and vitamin C. We’d been broke and scared, and I was growing so big so fast that at night my bones hurt. And there had never been enough food. Not ever.

But there’d been more with Simon than at St. Joke’s. He made sure of it.

And now… I was back at the same survival menu.

My life was traveling in large loops. Constant circles. With minor variations.

Not Simon this time but Beth. Not Beth…Jada.

Fuck. I was tired.

The magazines on the rack beside the checkout were full of Jada. Pictures of her in the mermaid costume, with the long curly wig and the mask, seemed to be the favorite.

And I understood why; it was sexy. That outfit. The whole look was sexy and not just because she showed a lot of skin above the iridescent tail she wore. The body paint made the most of her thin stomach and the bikini top pushed her breasts together.

It was sexy because it was so outrageous. So bold. Confident.

Fucking ballsy. So ballsy I had to smile. I wanted to laugh.

Because she didn’t care what other people thought of her. She’d committed to this idea that no one would know who she was. That’s what the costumes were. The masks and the wigs. It was her protecting herself, and I understood that in my gut.

Difficult pop star passes out onstage, said one of the headlines.

On another there was a grainy picture taken from a cell phone of Beth wearing a long blonde wig and a unicorn horn, passed out on the stage, her band rushing to her side.

Exhaustion? said the headline. Or a difficult artist’s drug-fueled lifestyle?

Man, they loved calling women difficult.

I couldn’t even imagine what her life had been like the last seven months. How do you cope with that kind change? That kind of sudden pressure?

I turned the magazine around and put it back on the plastic shelf, the pictures of Jada hidden.

There was no leaving her. Even if she’d given me ten names of people who could drive out here and bring her shoes and her phone and money. The fact that she had no one made me so lonely for her I couldn’t stand it.

Maybe because I got it.

I had Simon and that was it. And he really was only in my life because he was gone half the time. Most of the time.

My only friend was never in the country and rarely had cell service.

It’s why we stayed friends.

I’d kept all the spaces around me clear. All the spots that would have been occupied by girlfriends or friends or even lovers, I kept them blank.

Because it felt better that way. Safer.

None of that did me any good here.

None of that distance kept me safe because now I was locked up in a cottage with the girl I’d failed and the girl I’d loved and the girl I’d never forgotten.

On the outskirts of Prescott there was a used car dealership, dusty and sun-blasted, it’s red and white flags hanging limp in the windless day. I took a sharp right into the lot that had plenty of old SUVs and pickup trucks.

The salesman came out to greet me, buttoning his sports coat over his stomach. “Hey there,” he said, all smiles. “What can I do you for?”

“Straight-up trade,” I said.

“Your BMW?” the man asked, looking dubious. “For what?”

I pointed to a truck exactly like the truck I had at home. “For that.”

The salesman wanted to check the blue book and he would have to call the owner to see if he could give me that kind of trade, but I waved him off and a half hour later I was driving back to the Yucca Family Lodge in a stripped-down 2007 gray Ford pickup.

The salesman could figure out how much money I should have gotten for the BMW, while he also figured out how much it was worth to him to take my advice and park the BMW in the back for a few weeks just to be on the safe side.

“Safe from what?” he’d asked.

“All sorts,” I’d said and gotten out of there.

I opened the cottage and found it just as I left it, Jada…Beth in bed, the covers pulled up to her ears and Pest beside the bed.

Pest lifted her head as I came in, and I put our stuff on the dresser and poured Pest a bunch of kibble. I collapsed in the chair that sat next to the fire, and Pest, when she was done with her meal, came to sit beside me.

I reached down and pulled her up into my lap. I’d spent years trying to train the lap squirrel not to be a lap squirrel. But I figured we could both use a little contact.

I stared at the bed and tracked the slow rise and fall of Beth’s breathing.

My breathing began to match hers, and I thought, sleep creeping over me: This is how long it takes. Half a day, a few minutes of quiet and my body lines itself up along hers again.

I couldn’t stop it. Didn’t even know how.

“Pest?” I said, and my old friend licked my thumb in response. “What the hell are we going to do now?”