I hadn’t really slept. My mind kept replaying his words from dinner, every syllable scraping at my chest. Control, value, price. By the time the phone buzzed, I was already wide awake...just pretending not to be.
The phone vibrated against the nightstand.
At first, I thought about ignoring it. I had been lying in bed for hours, staring at the ornate ceiling of the penthouse bedroom as if the carved patterns might swallow me whole. I didn’t want noise, didn’t want intrusion.
But something in the persistent buzz,urgent, uneven, made me roll over and swipe.
“Megan?”
The voice on the other end didn’t sound like her. It was high, broken, like glass splintering. Megan was crying so hard the words collided with each other.
“Amber... I... oh God, I didn’t know who else... I can’t... he...”
