“It doesn’t sound creepy. It sounds sweet. And a little sad.” She rubs my arm and leans in close.
“Sometimes I pretend to have conversations with people who talk too loudly on their cell phones. Like, if they ask a question, I answer it. Sometimes they catch me and it’s pretty embarrassing.” She laughs and it makes me smile.
“I just wanted to share this with you,” I say.
“Why is it that every time I’m with you, I feel like you’re trying to tell me goodbye?” My blood freezes in my veins and my feet stumble over one another.
“I’m not,” I say, but my voice is flat.
“Is everything okay, Quinn? You know you can talk to me about anything.”
I reach down into myself and pull out what I hope is a convincing smile.
“I know. I’m fine.” I lead her over to a bench and decide the best way to get her to stop asking me questions is to pull up her dress and bury my mouth between her legs. It works surprisingly well.
When I let her up, her eyes are hazy and she walks slowly beside me.
Two days. Not even two full days. Tomorrow and then the next day the file is set to hit her father’s email account at 2 pm. By that time I’ll be on the road with Lizzy.
“I can’t wait to get my tattoo done,” she says after I get her back over the fence and we’re walking toward the car.
“It’s going to look amazing,” I say. I won’t get to see it, but I know Crash will do good by her.
“I hope so. I have this fear that it’s going to turn out like shit and then I’ll have this awful tattoo on my back forever.”
“It’ll be fine,” I say, opening the passenger side door for her.
She’ll be fine. I hope.
Twenty-Eight
I wish I could stay in bed with Saige the next day, but I need to go into work and scrub my computer. It’s good to have a list of things to do. It keeps my brain ordered, my thoughts occupied.
By the end of the day my computer is wiped of everything that might incriminate me. My client files (the legitimate ones) have been sent to the cloud and everything else is gone. My desk is absent of anything that could be traced back to me. I’ve wiped down every surface and the cleaning crew will be here tonight to do the rest. Lizzy’s transfer paperwork has gone through, after I used some money to move the process along. I’m set to pick her up tomorrow morning at ten.
Row has joined Hardy, and the rest of the guys will be driving the two moving trucks and cars left. I have the BMW to take Lizzy. I’m going to leave most of my apartment behind, with the exception of Leo, my safe and the coffee table, which will fit in the back and trunk of the car. If it hadn’t, I’d tie it on the roof and call it good.
There’s only one thing left to do. Say goodbye to Saige. Only she can’t know I’m saying goodbye to her.
I come home from work at the usual time and she’s deep in study mode, her books spread out around her, hair up in a messy bun on top of her head. She’s wearing a baggy shirt, no bra and shorts with her college logo on the side.
She’s breathtaking.
“Welcome home, dear,” she says, putting down her pen and skipping over to throw her arms around my neck. She pops up on her tiptoes and smiles brilliantly at me.
“How was your day? Shall I fetch your slippers?” She laughs and I kiss her hard enough that I almost bite her lip.
“My day was fine. How are you?”
“Good. Just swamped. But if I get enough done, then we can totally watch a movie and I was thinking pizza tonight. I’m craving melted cheese.” Her eyes widen when she mentions the cheese. My redhead loves her cheese.
“That sounds perfect. I have some work to do anyway, so go back to what you were doing. I’ll make you some coffee.”
“You’re the best,” she says, going back to the table and sitting down with her work again.
I put a new filter in the coffee maker and go to change into something more comfortable. I don’t have too many things here, but I’m going to have to come back when she’s at school tomorrow to scrub myself out of her apartment. I wish I could leave something of me behind for her, but that’s not possible. I wonder what she’s going to think when she comes home and all of my things are gone. Or she texts me and I don’t respond. Or she shows up at my office with lunch and my desk is empty. I don’t want to picture it, but I can’t stop.
The rest of the night is tinged in melancholy for me. I can’t let myself just enjoy this time because I know how soon it’s going to be over.
She cuddles up against me and I let her pick the movie. Instead of watching it, I watch her. How the light from the flickering screen crosses her face. How her expression changes as she watches. How her eyes crinkle as she laughs.
When the movie’s over, I take her to bed and make love to her as if it’s the last time, which it is. I make her climax over and over and over until she has to beg me to stop. Afterward she falls into an exhausted sleep on my chest, but I can’t close my eyes. I’m wide awake and wired. I count down the hours, minutes, seconds until her alarm goes off. I haven’t closed my eyes longer than a blink the whole night.
She stretches sleepily beside me.
“You were good last night. If I’m walking funny today, I know who to blame.” She gets up and winces, but gives me a smile.
After we shower separately, I give the appearance of getting ready for work. She doesn’t have class until nine, so I’m leaving over an hour before her.
She’s lazing around in bed, her hair wet and tangled when I come to tell her goodbye. I take a breath and then lean down, putting my lips to hers. I wish she were wearing her lipstick so some of it would be left on my face.
But her lips are bare and sweet and she blinks up at me and touches my face as I break the kiss and smile brokenly at her.
“See you tonight,” she says.
“See you tonight,” I say and lay a kiss on the tip of her nose. In the doorway, I pause and look back at her.
“I love you,” I say. She rolls on her stomach and I trace her body with my eyes. Memorizing.
“I love you, too.”
With every step, little bits of my heart break off and drop behind me. I’m leaving a lot of pieces of me behind here. I don’t think I’m ever going to get them back.
I drive around for a while in the BMW, just thinking and burning through gas. I sit outside her apartment and wait for her to leave. I watch her as she tosses her hair over her shoulder and hops into her candy red car. After she drives off, I wait for twenty minutes and then break into her place for the second time. I don’t want to be here too long, so I move as fast and as efficiently as I can. Once I’ve scoured every single bit of the apartment, I’m ready to go.
I look back again and make an impulsive decision. I go to the bathroom and find her lipstick. I uncap it and draw a heart on her mirror before slipping the tube in my pocket and locking the door behind me.
I’m getting into my car when I feel something cold against the back of my head.
The barrel of a gun.
Someone is waiting for me in the backseat of my car.
“Drive,” the voice says and I flick my eyes in the rearview, but the person is covered head-to-toe in black, including a ski mask. The eyes are brown and non-descript. I don’t know who it is.
My heart pounds a little, but I do what he says. There’s not really a whole lot of choice when you have a gun pointed to your head.
He directs me just down the street from Saige’s and then has me pull into an open garage next to a housing unit.