Jessica got home and sat on her bed without taking off her shoes. She did not eat. Did not sleep. Did not call anyone. She just sat there staring at nothing for a long time thinking about her father's face when he said six months and thinking about Dean's face when he said you are the collateral and going back and forth between the two until her head hurt.
She picked up her phone and typed Dean Lance into the search bar.
She wished she hadn't.
Article after article. His name was attached to things that made her stomach turn. A man was found dead in connection with a business dispute linked to Lance Corporation. Two men were hospitalised after an altercation outside a Lance property. A court case that was dropped before it even started, witnesses suddenly unavailable, evidence suddenly missing. His face in photographs at events, always composed, always that same expression, like nothing in the world could touch him because nothing ever had.
She put her phone face down on the bed.
This was the man her father had handed her to.
She lay back and stared at the ceiling and thought about running. About packing a bag and disappearing somewhere Dean Lance had never heard of. But then she thought about her dad in that hospital bed with the tube in his arm and his chest rising and falling and she knew she wasn't going anywhere.
She must have fallen asleep because when her phone buzzed she jolted awake and the room was darker than it had been.
She looked at the screen.
Unknown number. SMS.
It's me, Dean. I'm at your door, quickly come and open it. I wouldn't like to be kept outside and I don't visit people's houses because of my personality. But I did visit your father's house again today because I need an answer. And you know what that means. If my answer is no, you wouldn't like - I'm sure you wouldn't like - the condition you would want to meet your dad in if you ever give me no as an answer. I don't like.
Jessica read it once. Read it again.
Then she got up and went to the door.
Dean was standing there in the corridor exactly the way he had been standing in that hospital room. Like he had all the time in the world. Like showing up at a woman's apartment was something he did without thinking twice about it.
"You got my message," he said.
"You went to my father's house," Jessica said. "He is in a hospital bed."
"I am aware of that. I went to collect something he had been keeping for me." He looked at her steadily. "Are you going to let me in?"
She stepped back from the door.
He came in and looked around her apartment the way he looked at everything, like he was assessing it, filing it away. He sat down on her couch without being invited and looked at her standing by the door with her arms crossed.
"Your answer," he said.
"I don't have one yet."
"You have had since this morning."
"You gave me twenty-four hours."
"And you have used most of them sitting in here searching my name online." He said it without blinking. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
Jessica stared at him. "You were watching me."
He didn't confirm or deny it. Just kept looking at her with that same expression that gave nothing away.
"My answer is no," Jessica said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I am not marrying you. I don't care what my father signed. He had no right to sign anything with my name and whatever agreement the two of you made has nothing to do with me."
Dean looked at her for a long moment.
Then he stood up.
"Alright," he said.
Just that. Alright. Like she had told him something mildly interesting.
He buttoned his jacket and moved toward the door and Jessica almost felt relieved, almost believed it was that simple, almost let herself think that no was actually an option.
Then he stopped with his hand on the door.
"Your father is being discharged tomorrow," he said without turning around. "The hospital has been very helpful. Very accommodating. That accommodation ends tonight."
Jessica went cold. "What does that mean?"
"It means the doctors looking after him are no longer available." He opened the door. "It means the medication keeping him stable is no longer being administered." He finally turned and looked at her one last time. "It means you're no longer just becoming very expensive for Raymond Calloway."
He walked out and closed the door behind him.
Jessica stood in the middle of her apartment and could not breathe.
No was not an answer.
It had never been.
After Dean left, she grabbed her bag from the bed and started throwing things in. Clothes, her charger, her purse, anything her hands landed on. She didn't have a plan or a destination in mind but she knew she just wanted to leave. She just knew she could not stay in that apartment one more minute waiting for Dean Lance to decide what happened to her next.
She was out the door in five minutes.
She ended up at a small hotel twenty minutes across town. Somewhere that wasn't even popular and at the outskirts of the town so nobody would recognize her. She paid cash at the front desk and went straight to the room and locked the door and sat on the edge of the bed and for the first time in three days, she could breathe.
Like she's having a moment without panic that something will happen again
There was no Dean or hospital or even her father's face when he said six months. Just her and the walls with the bright light and silence and her own heartbeat finally coming down to normal.
She let herself have that for one night.
What she didn't know was that while she was sitting in that hotel room finding her first moment of peace, Dean was standing over her father's hospital bed.
And he was not there to check on him.
