Baited by Love novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Forty-One

I read page ninety-nine on the library steps, with the notebook open on my knees and my sandwich half eaten beside me.

The handwriting was even and small, and it did not shake once.

Day 99. Forecast: thunderstorms.

She left at six with a cooler bag and a thermometer.

I rented a bike at the shop on Willow Street and stayed two hundred yards behind her.

She sang to the sandwich.

It was a song about a dog.

At mile thirty her chain slipped.

I did not touch it, because she had not asked.

At mile thirty-eight there was lightning, and she said something to the sky that I will not write down.

She did not stop.

She went into the bakery soaked and came out holding a white box over her head against the rain.

I stood across the street and watched her tie it to the back of her bike.

Forty-one point two miles by my computer.

She cried at a stoplight on the way home, wiped her face, and kept going.

He called it the most devoted thing he had ever seen.

He had no idea who was devoted.

I read it twice.

Then I put my hand over my mouth and sat on the library steps until a girl asked if I was okay.

"I'm fine," I said. "I'm being thanked."

I found him in Room 214, sitting on the end of his bed with his glasses off.

Otto's side of the room was empty, and there was a sheet of paper taped to the door.

It said, in marker: I AM AT THE SOCCER FIELD. DO NOT COME LOOKING.

Underneath, in smaller letters: I MEAN IT. SOUP.

"You've read it," said Lars.

"Forty-one point two."

"I measured."

"You were behind me the whole time."

"Two hundred yards," he said. "For the first half. Then closer, in the rain."

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