"You met Len once," Phoenix says. His hand settles on my shoulder.
"You told me I didn't know her the first time her name came up and I asked, before I knew Len and Elenna are the same person."
It could be Ava or Torin's influence, or my self-protective instincts, or even my natural inclination to look for plot holes thanks to my career, but I'm on high alert for contradictions and inconsistencies with anything Phoenix says.
"You didn't know her, but you met her. She went to a book signing you had at The Grove. I didn't find out until later, because she didn't tell me until one of the last times we talked while I was in Antigua. She thought I would ask her not to go."
"Why would you have asked her not to go?" It's not like Len would have walked up to me and introduced herself as Phoenix's girlfriend if they were only friends, and there's a chance she would have brought her fiancé if she was still with him at the time.
"Because of her reason for going. She wanted to tell you everything. How I felt about what I did to you, that I was still in love with you, and that I'd stayed away because I didn't want to keep hurting you and knew you deserved more. That I had planned to propose to you. That I was in rehab and was cleaning up my life. She also wanted to ask you to see me in person when I got back from Antigua, but without me knowing ahead of time so I couldn't be a coward about it. She was trying to reunite us."
Except none of that ever happened. Is he trying to gaslight me right now?
"I think I would remember someone telling me all of this at a book signing."
"She had you sign a book for her, but she didn't go through with the rest of it. When she saw you in person and heard you speak, she knew she couldn't. It was your moment to shine, and she thought you seemed so genuinely happy to be there, meeting and chatting with your readers. She realized it was the wrong place for it."
That's for sure. Back then, the mere mention of Phoenix's name at my book signing would have had me asking her to leave, never mind the rest of it. I may have appeared happy, and I'm sure I was in that moment, doing what I'd worked so hard for and loved, but it took everything I had in me to get to that point after he walked out.
In the present, here in Phoenix's kitchen, I'm at a loss for how to respond to the possibility this could have happened. It might be my silence, or because the mood between us now is far from fireworks and physical chemistry, but he carefully lowers his hand from my shoulder, like I've become the most fragile glass he's afraid will shatter if he keeps it there. He isn't too far off.
How much healing do I still need to do to fully trust him again? The last few days have exposed the cracks in my heart I was certain I'd mended. It isn't fair to either of us or any shot at a lasting relationship for me to feel this way, but I do. Why is it so easy for me to slip into doubt about what I mean to him?
"I know you said you weren't hungry, but should I try to find us something?"
The gentle way he asks this nearly shatters me again. I came here intending to ask every question on my mind, but now, as every part of me frays at the edges right in front of him, I'm willing to let things rest. I shake my head.
"I'm still good as far as food goes, but I would like to go to sleep."
"Of course. Thank you for still staying here tonight."
What is it about his gratitude for me being here that makes me feel like crying? It's times like now that it would be so much easier to be twenty-two again, when I was still unscathed in love and life.
It isn't until after I've washed my face, brushed my teeth, and am in bed next to him that my emotions level out. Phoenix has been reserved and watchful since we left the kitchen, letting me lead. Now that my nervous system is settling down, he must sense it, because he positions his arm in an unspoken invitation to hold me. The choice is mine. I accept and snuggle in next to him. The action is an olive branch of my own.
"TV?" he asks.
"Yeah." Something else to focus on and distract both of us until we fall asleep is an excellent idea.
He must use the arm that isn't around me to press a button on a remote, because the television flickers to life a few seconds later. I don't know what we're watching, and I don't really care. All I want is to zone out, not talk, sleep, and start over when my eyes open in the morning. Since Phoenix is also quiet for a couple of minutes after the TV question, I assume he wants the same thing, until he speaks again.
"I know I broke a lot of trust with you in the past and I'm still earning it back. I don't want to lose you again over things I haven't said or sometimes don't realize I should say."
He holds me closer. His space heater effect, combined with how tired I am, already has my heavy eyelids closing as I murmur a reply.
"You aren't, as long as you stay open and honest with me."
"I will. That's a promise."
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It feels like reliving a moment when I wake up. There's an empty space beside me on the bed, with the pillow indentation still fresh, and the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. But it's light outside and my phone reveals it's almost noon, and Phoenix is fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt when he emerges from the bathroom. My eyes follow him as he crosses the room and grabs his wallet from the top of the dresser.
"Sneaking out of your own house?" My eyelids might be open, but my voice is still hoarse from the hours I was asleep. I sit up and reach for the water bottle on the bedside table.
"I was hoping to be out and back before you woke up and to surprise you with brunch." He walks to my side of the bed and sits next to me. Again with the déjà vu.
"In that case, this is a dream and never happened, unless you're taking food orders."
"Do breakfast burritos sound good?" he asks. "If not, I can get whatever you'd like."
I intentionally stare at him for a few drawn-out seconds, careful to keep a poker face. My lack of response must make him nervous, because he speaks again.
"I thought since they you used to be your favorite and--"
I raise a finger to my lips, still looking at him. He stops talking. He also looks worried now.
After a dramatic pause, I lower my hand again. "You're trying to seduce me, aren't you?"
"I'll start with being let out of the doghouse, unless that means I am?"
"I'll decide when you return with the breakfast burritos. Bonus points if you also get churros."
"Consider it done." He tousles a strand of my hair, then quickly leans in to kiss my forehead, almost as if he's afraid I'll protest about him doing this until after he's back with food. "Do you want me to make you coffee before I go?"
I scrunch my nose. "That's sweet of you, but it will delay the breakfast burritos, so no."
"Good point. I'll be on my way, then." He gets to his feet and gives me his puppy-dog look before leaving the bedroom, which means I'm in trouble when he gets back.
The front door of the house opening and closing is soon followed by the sound of an engine starting. I ease out of bed and head into the bathroom to splash water on my face. Phoenix left his phone on the bathroom counter, so I pick it up to move it to keep water from getting on the screen.
The phone lights up when it's in my hand. I shouldn't snoop, but it's a reflex for me to glance down, and of course I see the message there. Temptation to read it takes over when I realize it's the same name I saw last weekend, this time on a missed call notification and a text message. Both are from Dalton Petaluma.
Trying to reach you. I need you to come to the station. Call me when you get this.
Does "the station" mean a TV station? That seems like an odd way to phrase it, since a studio lot or soundstage would be more likely for Phoenix's line of work.
Then something else hits me. Would finding out who Dalton is and what films or TV shows he's worked on give me more clues about the top-secret project in Vegas, without Phoenix having to breach his NDA? Maybe it will turn up something about the project itself. Surely not everyone involved has kept their vow of silence. No one ever does these days, and some people are always ready to post entertainment gossip online.
I put Phoenix's phone down and return to the bedroom to retrieve mine, so I can search for Dalton's name. I expect an IMDb page with his film or TV credits, some social media profiles, and possibly a few articles where his name is cited or where he's been quoted. That isn't what comes up at all.
According to what's in front of me, Dalton Petaluma is a homicide detective. Which means the station he needs Phoenix to go to is probably a police station.
The part of a phone conversation I heard between Phoenix and someone else last weekend replays in my mind. He asked someone, whom I'd assumed to be Dalton, if he should be worried. With the new context I have about who Dalton is and what he does for a living, I'm more puzzled than ever what the call was about and why Phoenix reacted that way to what he was told.
Beyond that, why would he be in regular contact with a homicide detective? Does it have something to do with Len's case? And if it does, wouldn't that mean there's a degree of certainty she isn't alive and that she was killed? Or that there's a stronger reason to believe this than the other theories that she was abducted and could still be alive somewhere, or that she vanished on her own, for reasons only she knew, and stayed gone?
If this is about Len, then Phoenix's claims of having a long-held hope that Len is still alive, and the news last weekend making everything real again, don't add up.
Stop. Don't jump to conclusions or make assumptions yet.
Dalton's messages may have nothing to do with Len, although I'd love to know what else Phoenix could be talking to a homicide detective about. Do I confront him after he gets back with breakfast, or would that end up with me on the defensive, trying to explain why I was looking at his phone in the first place? After the tension-free banter we just had about breakfast burritos, bringing this up could bring us right back to how things were last night, and probably end with dissecting my trust issues.
There isn't a good way to approach this. That's the conclusion I come to as I set my phone on the bedside table, knocking one of my earrings from the table to the floor in the process. It rolls under the bed, out of my view.
Great. I get on my hands and knees to peer under the bed to look for it. It doesn't take long to spot, but it's rolled too far for me to reach it on my own. I'll need to find something to push it with. A clothes hanger might work.
I stand up again and cross the room to Phoenix's closet, where I retrieve an empty clothes hanger, then return to the bed. This time I'm able to reach the earring and slide it toward me with the hanger. Halfway to me, it drops into what must be a knothole or crevice I didn't notice in one of the floor's wood planks. The plank is close enough that I should be able to reach it with my hand and feel for the dip my earring fell into.
I find the knothole easily enough, but digging my earring out of it with my finger causes a piece of the plank to move. A small, rectangular section is loose on all sides. Curious, I curl my fingers around the edge of the knothole and try to lift the piece up. It moves with hardly any effort. There's a space below it, and something in that space.
No, not just something. Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, it's a handgun, and I can't tell if it's loaded from here. I'm also not about to touch it.
Why is Phoenix hiding a gun beneath a floorboard under his bed? Why isn't it locked up in a case somewhere? And when did he even get a gun? He was one of the most anti-firearms people I knew during the first time we dated.
I stare at the gun and gulp in a breath. There has to be a rational explanation for this, and for Dalton's message. What I need to do is put the piece of flooring back where it was, wash my face and brush my teeth, clear any remaining sleep-induced cobwebs from my brain with coffee and breakfast, and then figure out how to broach both things with Phoenix.
But when I'm in the bathroom again, cupping my hands under the running water, another thought barges into the forefront of my mind. It's about the guest bedroom down the hall, and how it's completely gutted. The floor was torn out and a new one is half installed. The unpainted drywall is new. There's no light fixture installed, just wires hanging from the ceiling in wait. I didn't get a close enough look at the windows to see if they're also new.
In that moment, my brain connects everything I've seen this morning, Phoenix's recent behavior and moods, and his near-total disappearance from public view for several years.
Oh my God.
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Even I'm screaming, Del. What happens when Phoenix gets back with breakfast?