Page 78 of The Unraveling

Kissing.

A beautiful little girl.

My eyes flood with tears.

A beautiful, perfect little girl.

Who is dead.

Dead.

I stand. And then run.

Through the book-lined living room.

Down the narrow hallway.

Out the apartment door.

Somehow I manage to grab my purse and scarf on the way out, but my jacket is a lost cause.

I find a stairwell and keep going.

Down four flights of stairs.

Out onto the street.

I don’t stop running for blocks, until I reach a corner and make a sharp turn. Then I lean against a brick building, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I’m not sure how long it takes. It’s a while. But eventually my breathing returns to normal. I stand and look around. People are coming and going, like it’s any other boring day of the week. No one pays attention to me. It’s New York City, after all. An out-of-breath woman appearing slightly crazed is nothing unusual, I suppose. But then I really look around. I’m at the corner where I told Gabriel I’d gone to get my phone fixed. He’d asked if it was the Verizon store. He’d grinned when I said yes.

But there’s no Verizon store here…

CHAPTER 33 Now

Hours later, I’m still wandering the streets, unable to think straight.

I can still feel his hands on me. Feel him inside me. I picture myself gasping with exertion, with raw need and pleasure, and yet… and yet when I close my eyes, I see her. His wife. And then his child. The photos. The freaking robe.

A shiver snakes up my spine. It’s too cold to be outside without a jacket. Behind me, there are footsteps—a figure moving closer. Maybe Gabriel has come looking for me?

Or maybe there’s another random person wandering the streets in the middle of the night.

I don’t want to deal with either, so I bolt back the way I came. Left instead of right. Right instead of left. And suddenly, I’m in front of the storage unit once again.

No Verizon store. There was no Verizon store. He smiled like he knew that already.

I stop, lean against a building, catch my breath once again. Maybe the Verizon store closed. Maybe it had been there, but now it’s gone, and he didn’t realize.

Or… he knows I was looking for him, wandering about near his apartment.

The thought seizes my insides. What would that even mean? I chew my nail, and my guts twist—God, the sex was exactly what I needed. Rough and punishing. It let me relax. It’s addictive. I can understand Rebecca’s desire for her boyfriend to do it that way. Especially if that’s what she’s used to. I mean, how could you go back to normal after that?

Maybe I was too quick to leave. I just got so freaked-out, surrounded by the remnants of his life from before. The life I destroyed. God, I’ll have to say something to him after all this. No sane woman just runs into the night after having sex with a man. The doctor-patient thing is obviously still a huge problem. Maybe I can spin it that way. Will he see through it?

Wait—does he see me right now?

I look left, then right. The street is empty, so I close my eyes. A long exhale brings me back to myself. To the moment. To the cold New York street, the concrete building pressing into my back. I need to go home. Need to shut my door, lock it, and pretend this never happened. I’m an awful, awful person. Tracking the man whose family you destroyed. Then letting all this happen…

But as soon as I push from the wall to go, I look back up at the storage unit and let myself wonder what he might have hidden in there. What would cause him to go back day after day and spend not five minutes or ten minutes, but thirty minutes, an hour, in its depths?

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