Chapter 5: Seventy-Nine Degrees

I came out of the clinic forty minutes later standing straight for the first time in a week.

Wylie was on the sidewalk three feet from the door.

His eyes were bloodshot and there was dark stubble along his jaw.

He crossed the distance in two steps and took me by both shoulders.

"Are you hurt?" he said. "Do you have enough money?"

"Let go of me."

"Did somebody scam you? Is the place you're staying safe? You don't know this city. You don't know the local anything."

He looked me over, fast, from my shoes to my hair.

His hands shook a little on my shoulders.

I had seen him this frantic once before, my freshman year.

He had found me sitting on the stairs outside a room I'd paid a fake landlord for.

He had picked me up then, and he had said I didn't have to trust anyone but him.

Now the man holding me was the biggest liar I knew.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"Your phone is on my family plan. You never moved it. The location sharing is still on."

He didn't see anything wrong with that.

"I'll fix that tonight," I said. "Take your hands off me."

"Jo, I'm trying to help."

"Take your hands off me."

On the sidewalk, a woman with a stroller slowed down to watch.

Two men outside the coffee shop stopped talking.

The clinic door opened behind me, and Cal came out with a clipboard under his arm.

He looked at Wylie's hands on my shoulders, and then at my face.

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