Page 97 of Roadrunner

Then he found a pace that belonged to this room and not to any room that had come before it. I met it. The headboard knocked once and he put a hand up to quiet it, which was the most Riley thing he had done all night, and I almost laughed and then I could not laugh because the next wave took the air out of me.

I came with my hands in his hair and my eyes open. No performance. Just the shake of it, and the quiet after, and his forehead against mine while he followed, soundless except for the breath he let go into my mouth.

We stayed like that until the house remembered how to be quiet.

Afterward I lay against his chest listening to his heartbeat even out and thought that I had spent years mourning a version of my life I hadn’t even known I’d been allowed to want back.

“Welcome home,” he breathed against my ear, right before I fell asleep.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. I was already there.

CHAPTER FORTY

Alex

Now

We were at Della’s on a Sunday afternoon, a few months after we’d moved in, when Riley went serious on me.

It came without warning. One moment he was beside me at the window watching Addy chase Arthur around the backyard. The next moment the quality of the air beside me changed.

I know that sounds like nothing. It was something. After enough time with a person you learn the difference between their silences.

I looked at him.

He was looking at the yard. His jaw was set. He swallowed once.

“I need to ask you something,” he said.

My stomach dropped.

He turned to look at me. His eyes were serious in a way that made me want to take a step back and brace for something.

“Something I expected would’ve come up by now,” he said. “But it hasn’t. And it needs to.”

I said nothing. I waited.

“Where’s the Jeep?” he asked.

I stared at him.

He looked at me steadily. “The Jeep, Alex. Where is it?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

A knot in my chest. Something tightening. Quick and specific and surprising in its force.

“California,” I said. “It’s in California.”

“What’s it doing in California?”

I looked at the window. At the yard. At Arthur dodging Addy’s reach.

“Joshua took it,” I said. “The night he left. The night of the accident.”

Riley was quiet.

“We’d argued,” I said. “About the weekend. He wanted to golf and I wanted him home and it went the way those things went with us.” I pressed my lips together. “He left angry. He had three cars and a golf cart and he took my Jeep.” I paused. “Out of spite. Because he knew what it meant to me.”