They Sold Me for Five Million, So I Collected It Myself novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Notebooks

Dane stood in the wreck of his apartment, silent.

He took out his phone, called campus police, and gave the address in a level voice.

The same older officer came, looked at the slit cushions, wrote three lines on a pad, and said "Do you know who might want to do this?"

"Yes," I said. "My uncle."

"Do you have proof?"

"No."

He nodded, and left a card, and went away.

The door closed.

The bakery downstairs had shut an hour earlier, and the smell of bread was fading out of the room.

I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed.

My duffel lay open on the floor.

Both of my spiral notebooks were gone, the old one and the new one.

My laptop was gone from the desk.

I knew what was in them without needing to see the pages.

Eleven months of the sequel to Wick.

The sacks on the kitchen table, and in the old notebook, a drawing my mother had done for me before I was two, which I had carried everywhere.

"They took paper," I said.

My voice came out odd.

"I can rebuild the work. I've got most of it in my head. They took paper."

"Tamar." Dane said.

"It's just paper."

I started to shake.

It wasn't crying. It was a small hard vibration in my hands that I could not stop by looking at them.

Dane came and knelt in front of me.

He didn't touch me.

"Tell me what you need," he said. "I'll do it."

"I need..."

I stopped.

Eighteen years of being invoiced had taught me never to finish that sentence.

I looked at his face, at the scar through his eyebrow, at his brown eyes with the lamp in them.

"I need you to put your hands on me," I said. "And I need you to not ask permission."

His eyes closed for half a second.

"Tamar, you're upset."

"I'm furious. It's different." I took his wrist and set his hand against the side of my neck. "I want one thing in this room that nobody can take. I want you."

He breathed out, long and unsteady.

"Five million," he said, almost under his breath, "for this."

"That's the going rate."

"I think I got a discount."

I laughed.

It cracked in the middle.

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