Chapter 11: Practice for What

"Theda, I have to go," I said, and hung up on her.

The stairwell was suddenly very small.

Maddox set the drawer pull on the bottom step as carefully as if it might break.

"Practice for what?" he said again.

His voice wasn't loud.

That was the worst of it.

"It came out wrong," I said.

"Did it?"

"I was scared. Everything good looked like something that would be taken."

"Theda asked me a direct question, and I..."

"And you gave her the smallest thing you could say about me."

I opened my mouth.

I closed it.

"Yes."

He nodded slowly.

"I told you on the first night what I won't be," he said. "I meant it."

"Maddox."

"I have been on the other end of that sentence, Ellory. I will not stand at the end of it twice."

"I'm not Kendrick."

"No, you're not." His eyes were steady and brown and very tired. "That's why it landed."

I had never felt so ashamed in my life.

I had said it for one reason, and the reason was fear, but the effect was the same.

Somewhere inside me, in the quiet place where I kept my own rules, a little voice said it plainly.

You just did to him what was done to you.

"You're right," I said.

He blinked.

I think he'd expected me to argue.

"I did it," I said.

"I knew what it would sound like, and I said it anyway, because it was safer than saying what I wanted."

"That's exactly what Kendrick does. He says the safe thing in the room, and somebody else pays."

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