Chapter 127

Kaia

I didn’t get up.

I heard Liam leave a little after six, the way I always did. His door, his feet on the stairs, careful on the fourth step. Then he didn’t leave. I heard him stop at the bottom of the stairs, and stand there for a long time, and then come back up, slowly, and stop outside my door.

He didn’t knock.

After a while, I heard something set down on the floor of the hallway. Then his feet again, going away. The front door, quiet, so as not to wake me.

I lay on my back and looked at the rabbit in the ceiling.

My mother’s dress was over the back of the chair where I had thrown it at one in the morning. Chloe’s pins were in a little pile on the nightstand. I had taken them out one by one, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, and every single one had felt like pulling a nail out of a board. My hair still smelled of the oranges in her spray. And under it, faint, of something else. Expensive cologne and cold air and a hand tha