“Jesus, f**k, babe, I’m beggin’ you, come inside.”

“Good-bye, Hop.”

“Baby—”

I turned and ran.

He turned and ran into his house.

He didn’t have his keys.

This was good.

This meant I got a head start and when I hit a motel parking lot, Hop had no idea where I was.

It was only when I was sitting cross-legged on the ratty bedspread did I allow myself to burst into tears.

* * *

Two days later…

I sat on my couch, twisted toward Tyra to my left, lifting a bent leg just like hers to rest it on the couch and I sucked back some wine.

Since I gave her the wineglass before I sat down, she’d already had her sip, so when I took my glass from my lips, she was prepared to launch in.

“I don’t blame you.”

I closed my eyes.

“Lanie, honey, look at me.”

I opened my eyes.

She leaned toward me and wrapped her fingers around my thigh. “I don’t blame you for me getting stabbed.”

“I know,” I whispered something I did know but had been denying for insane reasons until that moment I wouldn’t allow myself to get. Understandable fear after what happened that led to irrational guilt that no one gave me any indication I should feel. I just fed off it, or more to the point, let my monster feed on it in a vain and crazy attempt to keep myself safe from ever being hurt again.

“I hope so,” she told me. “Since I told you way back when that I didn’t.”

I drew in breath then confided, “I hear it over and over again in my head.”

Her head tipped to the side and she scooted closer. “You hear what in your head?”

“Our conversation. You telling me to end it with Elliott. You advising me that his getting us kidnapped was a concrete wall you can’t scale when it comes to love. Me telling you—”

“Stop it,” she interrupted, squeezing my thigh.

“I think that’s it, sweetie. I think that was why I couldn’t forgive myself even though you and Tack never blamed me. I think it’s because I play that conversation over and over in my head and it reminds me there was something that needed to be forgiven,” I admitted.

“Honey, you didn’t kidnap and stab me and you have to find some way to get that straight. I don’t know how to stop you playing that conversation in your head,” she stated. “I just know, together, Lanie, we have to find a way to do that.”

I took a sip of wine, my way of being noncommittal. I couldn’t tell her we could do that, since I hadn’t been able to do it for seven years. With this, I’d taken a big step. Who knew how long it would take me to get to the next one.

The day after the break with Hop, I’d called her and told her I was ready to do this. Not surprisingly, she’d told me to tell her when and where and she’d be there.

I gave her the when and where and last night, sleeping at home again, I waited for Hop to show or call.

He didn’t.

It was over.

That killed but I’d survived worse (I told myself) so now it was time to move on with my life. Do this. Fight the monster myself without Hop at my back.

And hope I won.

“I think this all might have to do with, uh… well, me getting you hurt, feeling guilt about it since you told me to dump Eli but also, mostly, that whole thing,” I waved my hand around, sloshing the wine I held dangerously, so I righted it and finished, “in Kansas City.”

“Do you think you need to talk to a professional?” she asked.

I put the wine to my lips, murmuring, “Maybe,” before I took a drink.

Her next question was voiced with hesitancy. “Do you want to talk about Kansas City?”

I didn’t.

Even so, I looked her straight in the eye and declared, “He used me as a shield.”

“I know,” she said so low I could barely here her.

“You know and you knew,” I stated and her head gave a slight jerk of confusion.

“I know and I knew?”

“You know what happened and you knew it would happen. That was what you tried to warn me about.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know the Mob would find you in—”

“That’s not what I mean,” I cut her off. “You knew, in that situation or any situation in life, Elliott getting involved with the Mob at all stated it clear to you, he would not protect me.”

She sighed before she scooted closer, took another sip of wine, then locked her eyes with mine.

“Yes, I knew. There are some guys, and Elliott was one of them, that just aren’t built that way. Luckily, the Mob doesn’t normally enter someone’s life so they aren’t put to that test. I didn’t know, if it came down to bullets flying, he’d use you to take them for him. I just knew that he made a bad decision on how to invest money. Then, when he lost his money, he made a bad decision on how to get it back, and it just went downhill from there. So, yeah, I knew. But I didn’t love him, Lanie. Tack is the exact opposite of that. He’d fight, kill and die before he let anything happen to me, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t sometimes a pain in my ass. He is. Elliott made it worth it to you in his ways. Tack makes it worth it in his. It’s just the way it is.”

I couldn’t argue with this so I said nothing.

She took another sip of wine before she finished.

“It’s easier to see this stuff clearly when emotion isn’t involved and, remember Lanie, you didn’t want Tack for me in the beginning. You hated him, wanted me to quit and walk away. Pretty much any good girlfriend at that time, before he exposed the man he really is, would say the same thing because they care about their girl, not the guy. They see stuff from the outside, not with emotion coloring everything. Sometimes they’re right, like I was with Elliott. And sometimes they’re wrong, like you were with Tack. But neither of us had all the information. It’s just that you got it all when it was too late.”

That was very true.

I took a sip of my wine then set the glass on my coffee table, dropped my hands in my lap and looked at her.

“I dream of Kansas City.”

Sorrow suffused her face and she whispered, “Oh, Lanie.”

“I see his eyes open and staring at me. He looks surprised. Not just in my dream. When it happened. He was dead but still, he looked surprised.”