He pulls out of the lot slowly. No hurry. No urgency.
The truck rolls past me close enough to feel the heat of the engine, and he lifts two fingers off the steering wheel in a wave.
The same wave he gave my mother at the gas station.
I watch the taillights disappear onto the main road.
My legs give out. Not dramatically. I lean against my Honda and slide down until I'm sitting on the frozen asphalt with my back against the driver's side door and my keys cutting welts into my palm.
Rookie’s truck engine cuts.
His boots on the gravel, fast and heavy.
Rookie drops to a crouch in front of me. His face is tight, controlled, but his eyes are moving fast, scanning me, the parking lot, the road where the truck vanished.
"Saylor." His voice is low, urgent. "Who was that?"
I look at him. The man who borrows ridiculous pens and makes me laugh and kisses my forehead and has never once asked me to be anything other than what I show him.
The man who doesn't know my real name.
The crack Tildie opened widens into a fracture, and the truth sits on the edge of my tongue like a coin balanced on a rail.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
"I don't know." The lie tastes like ash. "I don't know who he was."
His jaw flexes. He doesn't believe me. I can see it in his face, in the way his fingers curl against his thighs, in the controlled stillness of a man deciding whether to push.
He doesn't push.
He stands, pulls me up with him, wraps both arms around me, and holds on. My face presses into his chest and I can hear his heartbeat going fast, faster than his calm voice suggested, and I realize he was scared too.
He was scared for me.
"I'm following you home." He says it into my hair. Not asking. Telling.
I nod against his chest because my voice isn't working and my legs aren't reliable and the only solid thing in this parking lot is the man holding me up.
He follows me home, watches from the curb until I'm inside, and texts me thirty seconds later.
Lock the door.
I lock it. Test the knob twice the way I always do.
Then I slide down the wall and sit on the floor and press my palms flat against the cold hardwood and wonder how much longer I can keep lying to the only person who's ever made me feel safe.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rookie
Sleep doesn't come, so I stop pretending.
Two in the morning, sitting at my desk with the laptop casting blue light across the room and Saylor's lie sitting in my chest like a piece of glass I swallowed.
I don't know who he was.