---- began to thaw the chill from my bones. "Where are you taking me?" I asked. No answer. He started the car, silent and focused. "You're not going back in? Won't they be looking for you?" I couldn't stop talking. The fever blurred my brain, but my tongue kept moving, unmoored and restless. Tyler glanced at me like he was looking at a particularly slow-witted patient. "If you hadn't pulled your IV and run out of the hospital," he said, "I wouldn't be here tonight in the first place." I didn't understand what he meant. My head felt like it was about to crack open. And then-nothing. ---- The last thing I remembered was sinking into something soft and warm, like falling through a cotton cloud. When I woke up, I was in a strange bed. No one else was in the room. I was fully dressed. On the nightstand, beneath a thermos, was a small note. I picked it up. The handwriting was confident and bold, sweeping across the page. "T've got surgery today. Drink the medicine in the thermos. There's porridge in the kitchen. Heat it up yourself." I stared at the note for a while, expressionless. I couldn't figure out what Tyler was really trying to do. If someone said he liked me, I wouldn't believe it ---- for a second. Everyone in the Kingsford circle knew he had someone else, a woman he'd loved quietly for years, someone he couldn't have. And me? I'd only known him for a year. We hadn't exchanged ten sentences in all that time. Whatever his reason, it didn't matter. I wouldn't have to care for much longer. Just two more weeks. Yesterday had been the final day of my agreement with the Mankin family. I was free.