Chapter 12: Ask the One Who Was

I went out of Daphne's front door without my shoes.

I heard her say, "Willa?" from the living room, bright and puzzled, as I hit the stairwell.

I took four flights at a run in my socks.

The lobby doorman looked up, and I pushed through the glass doors into the rain.

A black pickup was parked across the street with its hazard lights going.

Ben was out of it before I reached the curb.

He didn't say anything. His hair was plastered flat, and his jacket was open, and he had plainly driven every road in the county.

"I called a dozen times," he said.

"I know."

"I saw her car at the ferry lot. I saw you get in it. I've been sitting outside this building for an hour, because I didn't know which window."

"Ben."

"Did she touch you?"

"She made me tea."

His eyes closed for a second.

"Get in the truck," he said.

It was the same words he had said outside the club, and it was a completely different voice.

In the cab he turned the heater up and handed me a dry sweatshirt from behind the seat.

I held the phone out to him.

"I'm not asking you to believe me," I said. "Listen to her."

He took it.

I watched his face as he played it.

He listened to Daphne laugh at something he had said to her weeks ago.

He listened to her call him the easy one.

His jaw tightened. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

When it ended, he sat very still.

"Play it again," he said.

I did.

At the second time through, he turned his head to the window.

"I'm not saying this proves anything," he said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Took His Prison Sentence. Now He Begs. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.