Page 94 of Pieces of Ash

“How long do we have?” I ask him, rising to my knees and reaching out my arms. They’re shaking because they want to hold him so badly.

He steps over to me, cupping my cheeks like he loves me. “Two hours.”

“You’re driving four hours for two alone with me?”

“Teagan,” he says tenderly, leaning down to kiss my forehead, “I’d drive a thousand hours for two minutes alone with you.”

Oh, my heart.

Every wall within me fell. Every barrier slipped away. Every terrible, forbidden longing that we’d silenced for a year was given a voice.

He had me.

And I had him.

Again and again and again. In every way. In all the ways that singers write about in love songs and actors try to capture on the screen.

He treated me like I was loved. Like I was a person. Arealperson. Not a model, not an actress, not his father’s purchased whore. Not a pretty bitch to try on like jewelry. He touched melike he loved me. All of me. The bad parts and the shattered parts and the scared parts and the beautiful parts.

I have never been touched like that. Not ever before. And maybe never again.

It was like a rebirth. Or a baptism. Like his tenderness had the power to soothe or…or even erase all the horrors of my life—parents who didn’t love me, a daughter I never wanted, a career that tried to eat me alive, a husband who wants to beat all of the spirit out of me.

Anders just…loved me. And, my God, if I have to, I will live on those two hours for the rest of my miserable fucking life.

At two o’clock, his watch alarm went off. He rolled off me without a word and put his clothes back on in the dark.

“This can’t happen often,” he says.

“I don’t care. I’ll take whatever I can get.”

He checks his phone and nods at me, one of his thousand sad looks stealing over his face, soft in the ambient light from his phone. His eyes seize mine.

“Stay strong,” he says. “I love you. I’m here.”

I blink at him because my eyes are burning. No one. No one except Gus has ever told me that they loved me, and I don’t know what to say back. But it scares me because it’s the most precious gift I’ve ever been given, which means that someone’s going to take it away.

“What if he finds ou?—?”

He lurches forward, covers my mouth, and shakes his head. “Don’t say it. He can’t. Not ever, Teagan. He’d kill us.”

I nod because he’s right.

“I’ll come back when I can.”

“Stay strong,” I whisper. “I love you too. I’m here.”

He kisses me, examining my face carefully, fiercely. “We will find a way out.”

And then he was gone.

And I am alone again, but my body is aching from missing his touch, and I wonder if I’m a good enough actress to act like nothing happened when he sits down across from me at dinner on Wednesday night.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Don’t let me be a stupid bitch who gets herself killed.

Who gets Anders killed.