Chapter 218

“Zeke come get me now,” I say, already moving, already pulling my bag onto my shoulder with hands that aren’t entirely steady. “I don’t care where you are, just come get me, I need to go home.”

“I’m two minutes out,” he says. “Front gates. Don’t move from where you’re standing.”

I hang up and turn, and Eli is already watching me with the particular stillness of a man calculating how much he’s allowed to do right now.

“I’m coming with you,” he says.

“You don’t have t–”

“I’m coming with you,” he says again, and there’s no room in it for negotiation, and honestly, I don’t have the energy to fight him on it. My legs have gone strange and unreliable underneath me, and my head is doing that thing where every possible worst case scenario arrives at once and none of them agree to leave.

We walk fast toward the gates, and he doesn’t touch me, doesn’t reach for my hand or my elbow, just stays close enough that I can feel the specific reassurance of anoth