Chapter 14: One Thousand Ninety-Six

Tobias's POV

I woke at six, as I have every day since I was nineteen, and for the first time the ceiling was not the guest room's.

Hallie was asleep with her face turned into my arm.

I did not move for a long time.

Then she opened her eyes and stared at the wall above the headboard, and her mouth went flat.

I know that look. It means they are back.

"What do they say?" I asked.

"They say it isn't in the book," she said into the pillow.

"Good," I said.

She laughed, and kicked me gently in the shin, and then pulled the sheet over her head to hide from the wall.

I got up and found my trousers on the lamp.

In my wallet the napkin was where it had been for one thousand and ninety-seven days.

I took it out and looked at it.

Rule one still said, No sex unless I ask.

She had asked.

I had spent three years planning my face for that moment and had managed none of it.

I put it back.

Nothing about it felt finished, and I could not say why.

I went down the hall in last night's shirt, past the camera, which I did not wave at.

I wanted clean clothes from the guest room.

The guest room was exactly as I had left it.

Except that the desk drawer was not shut.

I always shut it. It is the only vice I have.

I opened it, and found a small black recorder, the size of a matchbox, with its light on.

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