Page 144 of Our Last Resort

“What— I mean how…?”

He holds up a hand.

“He confessed,” he says. “William confessed.”

I have so many questions, and they all die somewhere between my throat and my lips. Only one of them wriggles out.

“His lawyer?”

Gabriel shrugs.

“His lawyer was on a flight to Salt Lake when it happened.”

Wow.

He must have felt cornered. He had played all his cards. He knew what he’d done.

I get that.

When Gabriel steps further inside the suite, he’s wearing anexpression I’ve seen before—in a news segment, on a harrowed man clinging to his panting cat, moments after the animal was extracted from a burning house. A desperate kind of relief.

“Frida,” he says. He opens his arms. Before he can do it—pull me close, hug me, collapse—I take a step back.

A memory seizes me.

Those six months when he was sick. The two of us, back in the storage unit. Gabriel was in his sleeping bag, facing the wall. His back was to me. I’d pictured my hand running along his spine and, with the same clarity, a knife digging between his ribs.

In that moment, he’d been mine to take care of. Mine to keep alive. A wounded animal I could choose to revive or finish off.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say.

Before I can lose my nerve, I do.

I tell him everything.

When I’m done, he takes a deep breath. Then another, even deeper. He’s not in control. The breaths are the only response he can conjure up, his body trying to exorcise something.

“Get out,” he says, finally.

I don’t fight him, but he keeps talking as though I’ve tried to justify myself—as though I’ve done anything other than pick up my suitcase and head toward the door.

“Get out,” he says again, “or I don’t know what I’ll do.”

I retreat to the lobby.

Fifteen minutes go by. Then thirty. Then an hour.

Maybe I’ll never see him again.

That would be fine. Painful, of course. Butpainfulis what I deserve.

And then he’s here.

From what I can tell, he has showered and changed. I did the same thing earlier. We’re both in jeans now, he in a white T-shirt,me in a black blouse. He’s wearing his big travel backpack—that fucking backpack—on one shoulder.

I almost expect him to pretend like I’m not here, but he walks up to the ottoman on which I’m sitting.

His expression is unreadable.

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