When I look back up, he’s gone. I buzz Rose to let her know to hold my calls and cancel my appointments for the rest of the day. I text Troy to pick me up out front. Once I’m in the Rover, I call Alison.
On the third ring, she picks up. I grin as soon as I hear her say hello.
“Hey, it’s me,” I say as Troy swerves through traffic towards her house.
“I was just thinking about you.”
I take a large gulp of air. This could blow back in my face so bad, I know it. I feel it in the pit of my stomach. But it does seem like the most logical solution, and truth be told, I want to be with her. Making up my mind once and for all, I go all in. “Are you home?”
“Yeah, I’m just finishing up a bunch of homework. Why?”
“Would it be okay if I swung by for a minute? I want to talk to you.”
“Uh, yeah,” she says. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine. Just want to run a few things by you.”
“I’m here,” she says, trying to sound confident.
I laugh because I’m trying to be sure this will work out too. “I’ll be there in a second.”
The Rover scurries through thankfully light late afternoon traffic and, before I know it, we’re pulling up to a little white house with black shutters. I dart out the door and race up the steps, knocking a handful of rapid beats before Alison pulls it open.
She stands in front of me in a pair of jeans with holes in the knees and a light green shirt. She looks like she should be fixing dinner in the kitchen, helping Hux with his homework, and waiting on me to come home for dinner.
I shake the thoughts away because the conversation that’s getting ready to happen could end that visual forever.
“Hey,” she says, a lilt to her voice that lets me know she’s as anxious as I am.
“Hey,” I say, entering the house. It smells like her, like vanilla and cotton, and is decorated in a warm, homey way that makes me feel welcome immediately. “Is Huxley here?”
She shakes her head.
Knowing we’re alone and this might not end well, I can’t pass up the opportunity to kiss her. I begin to pull her to me, but she melts into my chest. Our lips find each other, like they could in the dark, and I memorize every movement, every tug, every feeling of peace she gives me by being her.
She leads me into the living room and we sit on a worn sofa. I think about saying something nice about her home and how pretty she looks, but I can tell she hasn’t seen the article and I don’t want to put it off any longer than necessary.
“So,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Apparently someone snapped a picture last night of you and Linc entering the Farm.”
Her face blanches and her eyes go wide. “How? Where?”
I shrug. “It’s in the Dispatch. It’s of Linc and Troy mostly, but you can see you. Your face isn’t super clear, but it’s you.”
I give her time to process this before pushing the issue. She looks away, to a picture of her and Hux when he was much smaller, her eyes filling with tears. But they don’t fall.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words making me want to die. “I know this is what you didn’t want.”
She nods her head and doesn’t look at me. It’s like a knife in my heart.
“It’s not the pictures in the paper exactly,” she says finally, her words barely above a whisper.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s protecting Huxley’s privacy more than anything,” she says distantly. “But it’s . . . more than that.” When she looks at me, the sparkle i
n her eyes is gone. There are tight lines around her mouth letting me know she’s in pain. “When I think of the media, it terrifies me. I have panic attacks, Barrett. It took a couple of years after I left New Mexico to be able to even leave the house without shaking and being ready to puke.”
“I’ll never let anything happen to you, Alison.”