Outside, it had started raining at some point. Heavy, relentless sheets of it hammered the seat of my scooter with a sharp, staccato beat.
The guards shoved me into the rain. Oswald's voice came through the walkie-talkie.
"This woman is not allowed back inside the complex. Log her face into the blacklist."
I stood in the rain, soaked through, the blue delivery vest plastered to my body.
I tilted my head back and looked up at the twenty-third floor, where warm light glowed behind the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The curtains drew shut.
The rain came down harder.
I didn't know how long I'd been standing there before a black umbrella appeared over my head.
My heart slammed once against my ribs.
I turned. It was him.
Oswald had changed into a trench coat. One hand held the umbrella; the other held something balled up.
His dress shoes stood in the pooling water, the cuffs of his trousers soaked halfway up, but he didn't seem to care.
He came to find me.
My lips were trembling. Before I could get a word out, I watched him look down and drop the thing in his hand onto the ground.
A scarf.
I'd knitted it for him the winter of my freshman year. It took me two full weeks to learn how. I'd pricked my fingers more times than I could count.
The scarf landed in a puddle, soaking up mud.
He lifted his foot and ground his sole into it.
"I don't know how you tracked down this address."
His voice was low, nearly swallowed by the rain.
"But I'm warning you. Don't come around here again."
"I'm married. You harassed my wife. She's pregnant. She can't handle this kind of stress."
"And if you even think about using the past to threaten me, my legal team will show you exactly what an extortion charge looks like."
He closed the umbrella.
Rain poured down between us, poured down onto the ruined scarf on the ground. He turned to leave.
Four years.
I'd dropped out of college to take care of his mother. Lived from twenty to twenty-four pouring every last drop of my youth and every cent of my savings into the bottomless pit of a dead boyfriend's family.
My classmates called me stupid. My relatives called me insane.
Every morning, the first thing I did was take my medication. The second was cook porridge for Serena.
I bent down, scooped the scarf out of the puddle with both hands, mud and water dripping from my fingers, and hurled it straight into his chest.
"You don't know me, Oswald? Is that what you're going with?"