If You Stay, I Stay

"Close the door," I said.

Alessandro stepped inside. Liam locked it behind him, and suddenly the three of us were crowded into a hallway that smelled of wet wool and yesterday's takeout.

I read the message again.

Ask her real name.

Four years of hiding, and whoever had found me had turned it into a joke.

"Where did you get this?"

"A courier delivered it to my office yesterday. My security chief checked the area in the photograph. Your building is visible behind you. He found the entrance this morning."

"So you had people looking for me."

"Yes."

The answer was immediate. I disliked it. I disliked more that he wasn't pretending otherwise.

"Before the photograph?"

"Yes. Through the hotel first. The catering agency wouldn't give out employee details. The number on your temporary shift form wasn't active."

"That should have told you something."

"It did. I didn't like what it told me."

There was no charming way to answer that. He didn't try.

Liam leaned against the wall beside me. "Did anyone follow you?"

"A gray SUV stayed behind us for several turns. Rafe took a different route while I changed cars. I haven't seen it again. That doesn't mean this address is safe."

He spoke plainly, without the performance of a man enjoying our fear.

"Have you called the police?" Liam asked.

"Not on Emma's behalf. I don't know what reporting her address would expose."

I looked down at the photo. Until that moment, I had been prepared to refuse everything he offered. But he had considered the part of this that nobody could see.

"Can you leave us alone for a minute?" I asked.

He handed me his phone with a number on the screen. "That's Rafe. If you want to ask him anything without me present, call. I'll be on the porch."

He left his phone in my hand and went outside.

Liam exhaled.

"I hate that he's being reasonable. It makes my argument much harder."

I laughed once, shakily, and then the tears came.

He pulled me into his arms. I pressed my face into the faded Northwestern logo on his sweatshirt and cried without making much noise. I had learned to do most frightening things quietly.

"I don't know what to do," I admitted.

"You don't have to decide the rest of your life before lunch. Just tonight."

"Will you be safe here?"

"I'll stay with my sister. You know how many locks she has."

I did. She also had a husband who considered unexpected visitors a personal insult.

When I opened the door, Alessandro was standing at the far end of the porch, giving the entrance more room than it needed. He turned immediately.

"I won't go to your family home," I said.

"I have a house near the lake. It's mine. My father doesn't live there."

"Liam gets the address. He can visit."

"Of course."

"I keep my phone and my own money."

His eyes flicked to the cracked case in my hand. "Yes."

"And if I decide to leave, nobody stops me."

A pause. Long enough for me to see the answer cost him something.

"Nobody stops you," he said.

Upstairs, I packed jeans, sweaters, clean underwear, and the photograph of my parents I kept facedown in a drawer. Beneath it lay my father's old wristwatch in its battered leather case. The watch no longer ran. I took it anyway, along with my notebook of names and dates.

Alessandro was waiting beside the door when I returned.

He reached for the bag. I let him take it.

That small concession felt embarrassingly intimate.

Outside, he introduced Rafe, a broad man with a broken-looking nose and a remarkably gentle voice. Rafe gave Liam the house address and his direct number without being prompted.

Liam hugged me again.

"Call when you get there. And eat something that isn't stolen fries."

"They're a staff benefit."

"They're evidence of inadequate supervision."

Alessandro opened the car door. As I ducked inside, he put his palm between my head and the frame. I noticed. I wished I hadn't.

The drive took twenty minutes. He didn't ask about the message.

Instead, he passed me a sealed bottle of water and asked whether the heat was too high.

At the house, he showed me a guest bedroom overlooking a narrow garden. There was a lock on the inside of the door. He placed my bag on the bench and set a key beside it.

"The front door," he explained. "The alarm panel has a code. I'll show you before I leave you alone."

"Where will you be?"

"Across the hall, unless you'd prefer another floor."

I could still remember the heat of him behind me in a hotel bed. Across the hall suddenly sounded both impossible and insufficient.

"That's fine."

He nodded. "I'll ask someone to bring groceries. What can you eat?"

"At the moment? Unclear."

"Then we'll buy a variety."

He said it with such grave practicality that I almost smiled.

Downstairs, he made toast himself. It emerged scorched at the edges, and he scraped it over the sink with a concentration I associated with surgeons.

"You can afford a chef," I observed.

"I can also afford new toast. I'm considering both options."

I ate half a slice while he called a doctor from a number he already had, then handed me the phone so I could arrange the appointment myself.

Afterward, he showed me the kitchen, the exits, and the alarm. He didn't touch me once.

That night, I couldn't sleep.

At one in the morning, I found him at the dining table, sleeves rolled up, reading the same page without turning it.

"You can ask," I said.

He set the paper down. "I know you didn't give me your real name. I don't know whether you were hiding from someone or working for someone."

"If you think I went upstairs with you for a job, you should say it plainly."

His face tightened. "I need to know whether that night was real."

"It was real."

He looked away briefly. When he looked back, something in his expression had loosened.

I sat opposite him. "I changed my name because my parents died, and I thought whoever killed them might come for me next."

He didn't interrupt.

"Emma is the name I use. But I was born Elizabeth Mercer."

His hand went still on the table.

"What?" I asked.

"Your father," he said slowly. "Was his name Daniel?"