Page 100 of What You left in Me

I look at her. My throat feels tight. “It wasn’t… sweet,” I say. “It wasn’t slow. It was…” The word I want is ruin. “—a lot.”

“A lot,” she repeats, eyes widening. “Good a lot or bad a lot?”

“Yes.”

She snorts despite herself and immediately sobers. “So, you slept with him?”

“Yes. What did you think?”

“That you had a crush on him like a normal stepsister.” She whispers. I groan. She continues, “Okay, what happened?”

“Well… he left. The next morning. No note, no text. Just gone. But now he’s back.”

Her face folds into sympathy and something like too-honest curiosity. “Are you okay?”

I laugh. It sounds like it’s been left in the rain. “Define okay.”

“You’re not being helpful.”

“I know.” I pick at a chip in the ceramic with my thumbnail. “It’s like my body hasn’t figured out what’s happening.”

Penny gives me the face she saves for when I need honesty more than comfort. “He’s dangerous.” She says it plainly, like a weather report. “He’s also… that.” She gestures helplessly, like the word she wants is carved out of stone and leaning on a car in a gray suit. “Which complicates it.”

“I know he’s dangerous,” I say. “That isn’t the problem. The problem is that I don’t care enough.”

We sit with that. She doesn’t rush to fill it with slogans or jokes.

“Do you… want him?” she asks, softer.

My chest answers before my mouth does. “Yes,” I say, and the admission is a relief. “I want him in ways that make me feel like there’s something wrong with me. He— what he does—makes me feel… well, not safe, exactly. Seen. Like he’s not asking me to be good. Like I’m allowed to be a person who wants.”

Penny leans back, bites her lip, thinks. “I won’t judge you,” she says. “I will remind you you’re playing with hurricanes. And I will also admit that if he looked at me with his handsome face, I would faint and then move to a different continent for safety reasons.”

I laugh, and it’s real. “Good plan.”

“Also, I feel obligated to ask. Are we ignoring the whole stepbrother thing?”

“We are… putting it in a box on a high shelf,” I say. “We’ll label it later.”

“Fine.” Her mouth quirks. “Is he at least nice to you afterward? Or is he all brooding and mysterious while you struggle to find your cardigan?”

I press my lips together. A flash: the blindfold slipping, his hands gentle while he untied the rope, the brush of his thumb along my skin like apology written in touch. The cool kiss of the anklet.I need to know where you are. Always.How awful that my skin thrilled at that. How awful that it thrills remembering.

“He’s…caring,” I say. “In his own way.”

“In his own way,” she echoes, dubious and resigned. Then, she glances at her watch and makes a face. “I need to run back by seven. My boss keeps scheduling last-minute calls because he’s obsessed with working. I hate being an adult.”

“You’re going back tomorrow?” I ask, even though I know.

“Yeah.” She watches me gently. “And you need to think about going somewhere, too. Richard is back home now. You can’t stay here forever, Ari. This house is draining you. This place is…”

“I know.” The words are small but true. They flutter in my chest and land nowhere in particular. “I need to start applying. I’m not… I can’t just be the designated daughter.”

“You’re a damn good teacher,” she says. “They were idiots to let you go. Make a list tonight. We’ll redo your résumé on the phone. I’ll bully you lovingly.”

“Please do,” I say. “Love-bullying is my love language.”

We walk the little main street after coffee. My legs need to remember they can go places other than the kitchen and the conservatory and the end of the dock. The bookstore window has a display of paperbacks that all involve women running from something in beige sweaters. Penny drags me inside to smell books (“an ancient ritual”), then across to the thrift shop to debate the merits of a lamp shaped like a pineapple (“joy”) and a velvet jacket that looks like it knows a crime (“romance”). We end up with a scarf we both claim dibs on and laugh about the inevitable custody agreement.