Page 102 of The Voicemail

His fingertips brush my jaw so gently it almost breaks me. Then he lowers his head and kisses me. It’s not like the first time. It’s not desperate in the same way. It’s careful, because my mouth is split and my ribs hurt and both of us know now that wanting doesn’t make pain disappear.

Yet in that careful, gentle kiss, I feel like I finally know who I’m going to be.

I’m going to be his.

EPILOGUE I

ALEX

Six Months Later

Elena is in my office when I come home. That isn’t unusual anymore.

What’s unusual is that she’s behind my desk with my phone in her hand. I stop in the doorway. She looks up, and her expression tells me she’s found something she wasn’t supposed to.

“Why do you still have this?” she asks.

I set my keys on the side table. “I’d have to know what ‘this’ is first.”

She turns the screen toward me. My voicemail folder is open. Her voicemail is at the top.

Three minutes and fourteen seconds. Rain in the background. Her breath catching. Her voice trying to stay steady while she gave a stranger her name, her address, her apartment number, and every reason she had to be afraid.

I don’t need to look at the screen to know which message it is. I know the date. The time. The exact pause before she says, “I think someone is outside my building.”

Elena watches me from the other side of the desk.

“You kept it,” she says.

“Yes.”

“For months.”

“Yes.”

“On purpose.”

I cross the office slowly. “Yes.”

She looks down at the phone again, and something shifts in her face. She’s angry, but not only angry. Sad too. Maybe embarrassed. Maybe tired of finding pieces of that night tucked into corners she thought were safe.

“That woman was terrified,” she says.

“She had reason to be.”

“She was also reckless.” Her eyes lift to mine. “I gave a complete stranger my address.”

“You called the wrong number and still found the right person.”

“That’s a sweeter way to put it.”

“It’s accurate.”

Her mouth tightens like she doesn’t want to smile, still deciding whether to be annoyed with me.

She’s eight months pregnant now, and everything about her makes the room feel smaller. One hand rests at the curve of her stomach. The other holds my phone like evidence. She’s wearing a dark-green dress for dinner, her hair pinned up because she got impatient halfway through straightening it and refused my offer to help. I love her so much I’ve stopped trying to make sense of it.

“Why?” she asks.