Leave her here with Caleb, obviously.
He’d take good care of her. Better care than I could give her, that’s for sure. She deserves stability. Safety. Someone who won’t let her down.
Someone who leaves bathroom doors cracked because a cat meowed once.
Someone who arranges tools in perfect rows.
Someone who shows up with cat food and litter and secret glances and smiles and?—
My chest physically hurts.
I pick Sox up, hold her close. She purrs against my throat, completely oblivious.
“I’m planning to abandon you,” I whisper into her fur. “Because you deserve better than I can give you.”
She just purrs louder. Trusts me completely.
“You little idiot. You’d choose to go with me anyway, wouldn’t you? Even though I’m going to break your heart.”
And suddenly I’m not sure I’m talking about the cat anymore.
I roll my eyes at myself even as I wonder…am I a stray who got saved, too?Fed and sheltered and given a warm, safe place to sleep.
Who’s getting comfortable.
Domesticated.
Who’s forgetting how to survive alone.
In two months, I’ll have to choose: either go back to the wild with Z and be the girl I’ve always been, or admit I want to stay here with Helen’s hugs and warm cookies.
With Silas actually giving a damn.
With a bathroom door left cracked open and a boy who smells like temptation and looks at me like I’m something worth memorizing.
ELEVEN
CALEB
“My playlist today,”Harper announces the second she drops into the passenger seat of the Mustang, already reaching for the aux cord like it’s a foregone conclusion.
I squint at her. “Didn’t we do your playlist yesterday?”
Thursday was hers. Wednesday was mine. Tuesday was hers. Monday was—yes, yesterday was definitely hers.
She grins up at me, and something in my chest does this stupid flip-flop thing that I’ve been trying very hard to ignore for the past month and a half.
“Yeah, but I’m leaving soon, so you should let me have it more often. You know, be a gentleman about it.”
The words are casual. Throwaway. She’s already plugging her phone in, completely unaware that she justdetonated a bomb in the middle of my carefully maintained equilibrium.
Leaving soon.
Leaving soon. I force myself to focus on backing out of the driveway, even though my hands are white-knuckled on the wheel. Eighteen in three weeks. Three weeks is twenty-one days. Twenty-one days is?—
Goddammit. Obsessing over the numbers won’t change it. But my brain keeps ticking away. Five hundred and four hours. Thirty thousand, two hundred and forty minutes.
Not that I’m keeping track.