Chapter Fifty-Nine

Safiya

I stared at a new cell phone that had shown up on my doorstep, along with the bag I had left in that cabin in the woods.

The bag I did not care about.

But the cell phone?

I was clutching it like I had clutched another cell phone all those years ago.

I was also reading the two texts that were on it.

One had been waiting when the phone had been delivered anonymously with my bag. The single hard knock on the front door early this morning had made me jump with irrational fear.

I had quickly checked the secondary security panel in the bedroom, but all I had seen on the video feed was the retreating figure of a tall, muscular man dressed in all black with hair too dark to be Grayson's.

Then I had switched camera angles and saw my bag hanging from the handle of the front door.

After a sleepless night of storming weather and emotions, it had taken me thirty minutes to muster the courage to go retrieve it.

Everything I had packed in the bag was still there, but in addition, there was a new cell phone.

I stared at the text that had been waiting.

Storm's passing.

Then I looked at the text that had come through a mere minute after I had retrieved the bag as if he had been watching and waiting for me to find the cell phone.

You didn't wait for me.

It was those last five words that had been wreaking havoc on every ounce of the strength it had taken me to walk away from him on that rooftop.

Grayson had never accused me of anything.

Not even when I took that photo of us and displayed it and he saw it. He had said nothing. I had felt his anger. I knew I had broken the rules, his protocols, but he had not scolded me. He had not repeated his edict about having photos taken. He had silently, decisively grabbed the photo and left.

But this second text, his five words, they were not nothing.

They were dripping accusation all over my soul.

Except it did not read like merely an allegation.

It was five words of recrimination that were born of the kind of hurt that was so deep, it was void of anger. The kind of hurt I had been drowning in since I had seen all of those women, heard him speak his pet names for them, and watched as he tended to a wounded creature so broken that his praise of her had broken me.

I did not know how to see past the betrayal.

Not then.

Not now.

I ached as if my chest were bleeding, and my fingers hovered over the small screen as if mere words, typed in response, would cauterize these invisible wounds that were killing me.

Except this was beyond words, I did not know how to not want, and I could not stop this feeling of breaking like every molecule of air was spinning out of control.

The sun peaked, the house breathed, the waves lapped, a ghost I had tried to kiss had refused me, then accused me.

I set the phone down, and his voice played in my mind like a cruel charade of fate.

It's not our final sunset, Safiya.