Chapter 13: Not My Emergency

"Where are you?" I asked.

"The Eastside lot," Dean said. "Behind the dumpster. I didn't know where else to go."

I looked at Reuben across the kitchen.

He had been rinsing two mugs, and now he stood very still with the water running.

"Don't move," I told Dean. "I'm coming in for my shift in an hour."

I hung up.

"I'll drive," Reuben said, and turned off the tap.

He did not ask me what I wanted to do.

I noticed that he did not ask.

Dean was standing next to a dented grey sedan when we pulled in, in the same suit he had worn to the gallery.

He had not shaved.

His tie was balled up in his fist, and there was a pillow on the back seat of the car behind him.

Reuben parked two spaces away and cut the engine.

"I'll go in," he said, looking at the windshield. "Take as long as you need."

"Reuben."

"It's your door, Maddie." His hand stayed on the wheel. "I won't stand in it."

He got out and walked toward the building without looking at Dean.

He thinks I'll go back, I thought, and the thought sat heavy in my chest.

I walked up to Dean.

"Maddie." His eyes were red. "Thank God. I need one night. A couch. Anything. Bea's, yours, I'll sleep on the floor."

"No."

"I have eleven dollars on my card, and my mother thinks I'm on a work trip."

"Then get a motel."

"I can't." He swallowed. "I can't stand being alone in a room I don't have a key to."

It was the truest thing I had ever heard him say, and it did nothing to me.

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