Chapter 12: Both Doors

We told it at four in the morning at my kitchen table, with Lacey's terrible herbal tea going cold between us.

I had put on his shirt. He had put on my towel.

It was not a serious outfit for a serious conversation.

"Start at the beginning," I said.

"The voice came to me three years ago."

Thatcher turned the notebook over in his hands.

"It said a host was arriving. She'd have sixty days to win my love, and if she reached a hundred percent, she'd go home."

"That's what mine said."

"It didn't tell you the price."

I put my cup down.

"It said, 'The Target's heart is the reward,'" he said.

"I thought it meant something soft. I found out what it meant the first time."

"Mariel," I said.

He nodded.

"She was an event planner. Twenty-six."

"She kissed me in a coat check at a charity ball and told me it was destiny. I thought she was insane. I told her no."

"And?"

"I told her no for sixty days. I was polite. I was horrible. I sent her to a hotel in another state."

He stopped.

"On day sixty she was standing in my office, and the voice said, 'Host failed. Erasing.' Then she wasn't."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Nobody remembered her," he said. "Her sister didn't. The hotel had no badge for her."

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