Chapter 12: Closed Door

Keir felt me go still and turned his head.

The red light blinked behind the white sedan.

Then the light dropped, and Brittany stood up from behind the bumper with her phone in her hand and her mouth open.

"Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God, oh my God."

"Go ahead," I said.

Keir looked at me.

"Post it," I told his sister, over his shoulder. "Get my good side. Say whatever you like about me."

"You're a married woman!"

"I'm a woman whose husband asked for her phone in front of his mother," I said. "I've already been on your page in worse light."

Brittany's lip trembled. She looked toward the hotel doors, and then back at us.

She did not post it. I watched her thumb hover.

Then she turned and ran across the lot, heels clicking, and the doors swung shut behind her.

Keir let out a breath that was half a laugh.

"That was either the bravest thing I've seen," he said, "or the most reckless."

"Take me home, Keir."

"To Dot's?"

"To wherever I'm sleeping tonight."

His eyes held mine. They were very dark in the lamplight.

"Are you sure?"

"I have never been so sure of anything in my life."

He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other wrapped around mine on the seat between us.

Neither of us spoke. At every red light he turned and looked at me, and I looked back, and the light changed.

Dot's building was dark when we climbed the crooked stairs.

A note was taped to the kitchen door in Dot's scrawl.