Page 46 of When He Calls

Ellis's skeleton is ahead. The sensor, the laugh track, the thing that has run my body through four seconds of panic every day for more than two weeks. We're approaching from the south. Twenty feet. Fifteen.

His hand tightens in mine. He doesn't say anything. Doesn't tell me it'll be okay. Doesn't narrate. Just holds.

Ten feet. The sensor triggers. The laugh starts.

My body does the thing. The clench, the ribs closing, the breath stopping. Four seconds. His hand in mine, holding, the pressure steady. Bean pulling forward, nails on the sidewalk. The laugh ending. The sensor resetting. My breath returning in threes.

"You good?" he asks.

"Yeah." My voice is shaking. My hand is shaking in his. The skeleton is behind us. November. November morning. His hand in mine. Bean's leash in the other. The gray light on the sidewalk. The holiday over. The year's worst night survived. The man walking next to me is the man who called my name in the dark while my body learned what it was missing.

"Yeah," I say again. Steadier this time. "I'm good. Holy shit. I'm good."

Bean's tail is going. The morning is cold. His hand is in mine.

We walk.

Epilogue: Brantley

Thanksgiving, at his apartment. Our apartment, he says now, though my name isn't on the lease and my mail goes to the place on Birch I rented the week after Halloween. Two blocks over. Close enough to walk. Far enough to be a separate life if anyone ever checks.

Nobody checks.

Bean is on the couch and she’s fast asleep. Her paw hangs off the edge and she snores ever so quietly. Her ears twitch when the oven timer counts down, the small internal clock that has learned the sound means food and food means scraps and scraps mean the man who burned risotto reading about attachment theory is cooking again.

The risotto is better now. Not good, but better. Milo stands at the counter, watching me stir. His face does the thing it does when he's editing, the slight narrowing, focus concentrated, his brain applied to a single problem. Except the problem is my technique.

"You're stirring too fast."

"I'm stirring at the exact speed I always stir."

"That's the problem. You stir like it owes you money. It's good, I guess, if you wanna be a mob boss. It's a little bit shit, but it's good."

The laugh comes from both of us. The sound fills the kitchen, bounces off the tile, reaches Bean on the couch. Her tail moves once.

Our apartment smells like cedar, a new candle, the holiday shipment that arrived yesterday with a note that said I'm coming for Christmas and I'm bringing wine and I expect to meet this person or I'm moving back to the West Coast.

He told Noor. Not everything, but enough. A man he met at a coffee shop who turned out to be someone he'd been talking to on the phone. The coincidence version. The version where the universe arranges two strangers at the same outdoor table and the dog decides. The version where nobody picked a lock, memorized a keypad code, or climbed into a sleeping man's bed with a bottle of lube purchased fifteen miles away with cash.

The version where it's a love story.

I stir slower. The risotto cooperates. He leans against the counter, his hip against the edge, his signature gray shirt pushed up to his elbows. His body is different now. The stress weight he lost is coming back, the muscle returning to his arms, his shoulders, the places where October stripped him. He's eating full meals. He's sleeping eight hours without the trazodone, which sits in the medicine cabinet, unused, the bottle a monument to something he thinks was temporary.

"Vyne's book is done," he says. "Final pass. She's submitting to her agent Monday."

"The vineyard novel."

"The protagonist makes a choice on the last page that I didn't see coming. She'd been building toward it the whole time and I missed it. The spine was there from the beginning. I just couldn't see it until the ending clicked."

Spine. The word belongs to him. The word is his and yet it’s mine too.

Everything about him is mine.

The thought arrives without heat. Without the urgency that drove the fourteen days, the notebook, the plan. The thought is settled now. Domestic. The obsession didn't end. The obsession found a house and moved in.

We eat at the kitchen table. The candle between us. Bean under the table, her body draped across both our feet, the weight distributed equally,

He talks about the next manuscript. A debut. First person, present tense, a woman rebuilding after a disaster she caused. The structure is ambitious. The voice is unsteady. He's excited about it and his face lights up as he babbles on.