Chapter3

I took a step back from the car.

“It’s not far. And we barely know each other. You don’t have to drive me.”

Adrian watched me for a moment.

“We barely know each other?” His tone sharpened. “Claire Bennett. Has it been so long you’ve forgotten me?”

My fingers tightened around my phone.

I hadn’t forgotten a thing. I’d only thought he had.

The rain was soaking through my sleeves, but I stayed on the sidewalk. “I can get home by myself.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I need to talk to you.”

That settled any foolish possibility I might have been tempted to invent. I opened the back door and got in.

He passed me a towel. I dried my hair and the water running down my neck while he pulled away from the curb.

Neither of us spoke until we were headed back toward the apartment.

“Two things,” he said. “First, don’t tell Vanessa about us. I’ll compensate you.”

I stopped rubbing the towel between my hands.

“I should have done it at the time,” he continued. “But you disappeared. Money, introductions, help with your career. Whatever you need.”

He could afford to make an offer like that. I had no doubt he’d follow through.

What I hadn’t prepared for was hearing that night discussed as something to settle.

He’d been drugged. That much I knew. I’d happened to be there, and he’d asked me for help. I’d said yes. I still didn’t know who had drugged him or exactly what had happened before he found me.

For a long time afterward, I’d told myself that I’d agreed, so I had no right to be hurt by what came next. I’d wanted him. He hadn’t promised to want me back.

Two years ago, I would have refused his money.

Now I thought of Grandma, and of the figures I kept rewriting on the backs of envelopes. I couldn’t afford to reject his offer just so I could leave this car feeling proud of myself.

“What’s the second thing?” I asked.

He picked up a lighter while we waited at a red light, clicked it shut, and put it down again. The light changed. For several minutes, he said nothing.

Then he spoke as though we’d moved on to an ordinary errand.

“Ethan Brooks has been asking people about you for the last two years.”

“Ethan?”

I remembered him. Adrian’s closest friend, another rich young man in Sophie’s circle. He’d always been the first to suggest going somewhere else and the last to want the night to end.

I’d liked him well enough, but we hadn’t been close. Why would he have looked for me?

Adrian glanced at me in the mirror.

“He worries about his friends. You vanished. He thought something might have happened to you.” He gave a brief laugh. “He’s asked half the people we know. Including me, more times than I can count.”

“Oh.”

I wanted to ask whether Adrian had looked, too.

The question was so humiliating that I pressed my lips together to keep it in. I already had the answer he’d given me two years ago. I didn’t need to make him repeat it.

“What should I do?” I asked instead.

“Meet him when you have time.”

Adrian kept his eyes on the road.

In the end, I asked Adrian for thirty thousand dollars.

I had to make myself say the amount. He didn’t ask what I needed it for. He took my bank details, made the transfer, and waited until I checked my account.

It was there.

“Thank you,” I said, looking at the screen.

“Claire.”

I raised my head. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

“In the last two years, have you dated—”

He stopped.

I waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, I looked out the window and realized we were parked outside my building.

“You’re home,” he said. “Go on.”

Before I got out, he handed me a slip of paper with Ethan’s Instagram handle on it.

“Message him whenever you’re ready.”

I tucked it into my bag and left the car.

Upstairs, Vanessa was washing the dishes. I helped clear the table, carrying the serving plates I’d filled a few hours earlier back into the kitchen.

Her phone lit up beside one of them.

Would you consider moving? This place is too far out. I’ll find you somewhere else.

Adrian’s name was above the message.

Of course he’d want a better apartment for his girlfriend. He was used to more than our cramped living room and unreliable elevator. And perhaps he didn’t want to run into me every time he visited her.

I turned the phone facedown and carried the last plate away.

When Vanessa finished at the sink, she threw her arms around me.

“You’re amazing. He loved the meal. You have to promise me you won’t tell him you made it.”

“I won’t.”

I went to bed with the slip of paper on my nightstand.

For a while, I just looked at it. I hadn’t expected anyone to have worried about me after I left. I’d assumed they’d gone back to their parties and dinners, and that my empty place at the edge of the room hadn’t made much difference.

I opened Instagram and typed in Ethan’s handle