I crawled out of a bed in a haze. All night, I tossed and turned, thinking about Mara and why I couldn’t break through to her. Every time I felt something in her fortress give, she ran away long enough to shore back up the holes.

A less stubborn man might take it personally. Regardless, I got maybe two hours of sleep before my alarm blared. My phone sat silent next to the clock, and I glared at it, too, for not alerting me to a text from her.

How can a person not send a dang text? Not even an, I’m alive after you fucked my brains out and I had a meltdown in your shower.

I cleaned up and dressed quickly, loathe to wash the scent of her from my skin and hair. At least my sheets might smell like her for a few days, unless I could convince her to come back. And stay. Definitely to stay. I had more room in my apartment than a single man could ever need, and she didn’t have many possessions from what I saw at the hotel.

Her return seemed unlikely considering I heard her sobbing on the bathroom floor. I wanted to break down my own door and comfort her, but I could only push so far, and the little voice in the back of my head gnawed at me. Blaming me for why she fled. I asked her several times while we were together. I don’t think I pushed her, but a tiny fleck of my brain always worried I could take something too far one day. Not that I spent enough time with women for it to become a real anxiety.

I locked up, climbed in my truck, and headed toward the bar. It sat on the side of the main route through town the way it had for fifty years. A place I’d never leave, more home than home for me. I pulled into the lot, sat there, and stared at the worn brick and the refuse I needed to clean up in the parking lot, and I never felt more like I belonged there. Just right there, at the bar, working, making love to Mara at night, and seeing her open up to me one day. It might be slow progress, but I assumed she tried. The therapy was helping. At least, I thought so. She’d never hear it from me though.

Now, I stared at the door of her hotel room. Everything in me screamed to go see if she was okay. And yet, I remember her distinctly informing me she was a big girl and had to do things her way. In fact, she was adamant on the phone. I remember it, because she ripped me a new one, and she made it clear she didn’t need anything from me unless she asked for it.

Murphy, she did not ask you to check on her. She did not ask you to call her. She fucking did not give you any sign, hint, or warning she needed to see you this morning.

Where was the line between too much and not enough? I’d never been able to draw it.

Saint Murphy, indeed.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to work if I didn’t check on her. At the very least stand on her threshold and see for my own eyes I hadn’t been the one to hurt her. So I walked across the parking lot, hoping she wouldn’t snap at me for asking. I knocked softly and waited.

No answer.

I knocked harder this time and listened at the door. The silence greeting me sent a chill down my spine.

A spike of fear punted me up the ass, and I scrambled in my jean’s pocket for the key she gave me shortly after coming back home. I slid it in the lock and shoved the door open, preparing myself for the worst.

The worst bed making job I’d ever seen in my life.

She wasn’t there, and I checked the bathroom just in case she might have slipped or something…

I didn’t let myself fill in the end of such a thought.

I glanced around her room to make sure nothing was broken like she’d been kidnapped by coal miners or something.

My mind jetted off to weird places if I left it untethered.

I spotted a notebook on the desk, soft brown with my name scrawled across the cover. Opening a notebook with my name on it wasn’t invading her privacy, right?

I told myself the lie and tried to believe it as I flipped open the cover and stared at the top. Mara’s mental health history and her race from my apartment last night nailed shut the coffin of my resolve as I glanced over the page. Dated the night before. She must have written it when she left my place.

The chair sat pulled out, and I set myself on the edge while I squinted at her tiny cursive handwriting.

I crumpled the notebook in my hand as everything started firing at once. My vision blurred, casting the room in a mass of orange and yellow. I’m not going to throw up, I repeated over and over to myself, until my vision cleared. All that remained was the anger shuttled by fear. Likely the worst combination of human emotion to intertwine. The chair tipped, and I swept the desk clear looking for pills or anything she could do it with. No way I’d lose her again. Not in this lifetime and not to the next.

The delicate shell of the paper cover had curled over and stuck at a crease, a stamp sat inside the back cover, and I shifted it to find the address of the rehab center. It must have been where she picked up the notebook. Could she be there now?

Did I hunt her down make sure she was alright, or…this time my mind didn’t give me the mercy of a fade to black. I pictured her beautiful face haloed by a body bag, and the sight caused a wave of nausea to roll over me. I thought I’d lost her once. If I could make sure she was fine, then I didn’t have to think about it.

I jumped back in the truck and drove as fast as possible toward the small hospital on the other side of town. A place I used to work and hated stepping foot into. In fact, I hadn’t been there since my father passed away a few years back. He left peacefully, unlike Mara’s mother.

The parking job didn’t bring me much credit, but at least I didn’t try to fit my truck between two SUVs in the handicap spots.

My heart turned over and inside out as I jogged through the hospital. A nurse sat at the reception desk. Her pink lipstick made her weathered face seem meaner. “Excuse me, I’m trying to find the therapy rooms? I’m looking for a friend who might be in group therapy.”

She snapped her gum and eyed me across her desk. I immediately wanted to cover any and all vulnerable parts from her gaze. “Are you signed up for the therapy session?” she fairly asked, still staring at my crotch.

“No, I told you. I’m looking for a friend.”

She shook her head, finally glancing up to my face now. “Sorry, can’t let you back there. Not without signing up.”

I pulled out my wallet. “Fine, sign me up.”

“It’s free. You don’t need that.”

“Great.” I let out a sigh, my impatience leaking out. I scraped my hands over my head, trying to calm my still ragged breathing.

Please let her be here.

Please let her be here.

Please let her be here.

“I just need to see proof of your veteran status,” the nurse said.

I glared, now bracing my hands on the counter. “I’m not a veteran. Point me to the door, or I will go hunt down your supervisor’s supervisor and tell him or her how you like to ogle the distressed patients!”

Her eyes said she didn’t believe me, but she pointed straight down the hall with one bony arm. “193.”

“Thank you,” I tossed at her—she likely missed the sarcasm anyway—as I stood up and faced the direction she pointed. I wanted to walk. Go slow, give me more time to pray, even though I didn’t believe in God. I couldn’t. I sprinted down the hall as fast as I could run and threw open the door.

A group of people sat in the middle of the room, and Mara jumped from one of the seats and maneuvered between the others.

My heart might have stopped beating for a second. The world spun around me, and I feared, for the first time in my life, I was about to faint.

What depths has this woman driven me to?