Anne couldn’t keep up. “A loose—wait a minute, what—?”
Sadie stood abruptly. Her face was pink, her breath coming fast.
“Sadie? I don’t understand anything you’re—”
“I can’t stand the idea of leaving you!”
It was a loud, shrill, frightened cry that echoed throughout the room.
The oddest sensation pulled hard inside Anne. It felt almost exactly like the rush of wet sand sinking beneath her feet as the ocean drew away to build a wave.
Now Sadie was the one who couldn’t make eye contact. “That’s what I needed to figure out before I talked to you. Why the thought of not living next door to you feels so—so—” She clasped her neck with one hand. “It doesn’t feel like I’dmissyou. Nothing that normal. It feels like my throat’s being steeped in wet concrete—”
Anne’s heart tripped over her ribs.
“—like, like salt would just slip right out of my food if you weren’t there with me, like all the parties in the world wouldn’t mean a damn without your perfectly-arched right eyebrow decorating the room—”
“Sadie.” Anne grabbed the edge of the table. She was sitting, which meant she couldn’t fall down.
“—I know, I know, you must think I’ve gone completely off my rocker, and maybe I have, but I just—the thing is, I just don’t know if I can live somewhere,anywhere, without you there.” Then Sadie looked at Anne, and the feral desperation in her eyes felt like a burst of heat blazing across Anne’s face. “I think—I think—”
“What?” Anne had just enough breath to get out the word.
“I can’t live without you,” Sadie said simply.
A small sound strangled in Anne’s thick throat. Her hands clenched involuntarily.
Sadie laughed, a sound with no humor in it. “Ridiculous. Melodramatic. I know. I swear, Iknow. But say something, won’t you? Tell me what you’re thinking. Please tell me something. Anything.”
Take me to you, imprison me—enthrall me—
Anne gasped and put her palm over her mouth.
“Anne?”
I can’t be apart from her. I have to be with her.
I can’t live without her.
“Please—”
She jumped to her feet, grabbed the back of the chair with one shaking hand, and burst into tears.
“Anne!”
I’m fine, she tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Helpless, all she could do was sob through her open mouth.
Dense pain impaled her chest. Maybe she was having a heart attack. Maybe this was exactly what a heart attack felt like. Her heart, attacked.
“What is it?” Sadie grasped Anne’s upper arms with both hands, her face pinched with worry. “What’s wrong? What do you need? I didn’t mean to—”
Anne pushed Sadie away and bolted from the table.
The sounds coming out of her as she ran toward her bedroom were alien in her own ears, like someone else was sobbing, someone she’d pity. She’d never felt more mortified in her life, and that was a hell of a thing for a woman with an ex-husband who’d abandoned her because he was, he was—
The bedroom door slammed behind Anne. She had just enough self-presence to remember to lock it before she stumbled toward her bed and sat down, hard.
Sadie couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Anne. Because Sadie couldn’t live without her.