“You like… glow when you get off stage,” I ran my hand through Justin’s hair as I sat next to him on the airplane. Brady is across from us, sprawled across the two seats sleeping soundly.

         “It’s sweat Chloe,” Justin answered with a crooked smile.

         “No it’s not,” I laughed, playfully slapping his arm, “I mean yeah, there is sweat but you glow too. There’s more than just sweat.”

         He shrugged, placing an arm over my shoulder, “What can I say? I’m a glower.”

         “Is that a good thing?” I curled up to him and closed my eyes, “I’m not even tired.”

         “That’s because you slept all day,” he laughed as he pulled my legs onto his lap, “You’re in a good mood.”

         “How can I not be?  I’m excited.”

         “I know, me too,” he kissed my forehead before continuing, “So about your birthday…”

         “Stop,” I cut him off. I don’t understand his obsession with my birthday. “Don’t ruin it.”

         “We gotta do something, it’s your birthday.” I understand it’s my birthday but I need him to understand that I don’t want to do anything.  Why is that so hard to understand?  “Don’t you want a party?”

         “I will kill you. I promise.”

         Justin laughed and threw his head back, “No party. Got it. There’s that dinosaur park. We should go there. You know, they have all those footprints and fossils.”

         “Why would I want to go there on my birthday?”

         “Oh, I thought you didn’t want to do anything for your birthday,” he smiled, “We’ll talk about it later.”

         “There’s nothing to discuss. I don’t want to do anything for my birthday.”

         “OK.”

         “You’re so not going to let it go.”

         Justin smiled as a response and grabbed onto my hand as we landed. He picked up Brady and carried him to the car so we wouldn’t have to wake him. I’m getting tired now, I don’t really know why.

 I got really nervous as we walked to my apartment. This is the exact situation I was in the night before and Gabe was waiting for me. There’s no reason for me to be nervous, the cops have him in custody and even if they didn’t I have Justin and Tiny and there’s no way Gabe would get anywhere near us.

         We stopped in front of my door as I went digging in my purse for my keys. Justin held my sleeping son in his arms and Tiny stood a few feet behind us. As I put the key in the slot I realized it wasn’t locked, “It’s open. It’s not locked.”

         “What? We locked it.”

         “I know. That’s why I’m telling you it’s unlocked.”

         Justin took a half a second to think before handing me Brady, “Alright take him. Stay back with Tiny while I go in.”

         “No!” I shouted, “Why on earth would you go in? The door is unlocked. You don’t go in a house when the door is unlocked. You learn that in kindergarten, Brady learned it last week. How do you not know that?”

         “Maybe we forgot to lock it.”

         “I locked it, and I checked at least three times. Trust me, I locked it.”

         He took a deep breath, at least now he’s starting to think, and placed his hand on the doorknob, “So what? We’re just going to leave? You don’t have any clothes for Brady he has school in the morning.”

         “Who cares about school?” I shouted. I know I’m acting like a crazy person but Justin just doesn’t get it.

         “OK, calm down. I’ll just go in and get some clothes for him and you can take him back to the car with Tiny.”

         “Justin!”

         “Chloe!” he shouted back before I could say anything else, “They have him, calm down.”

         “I’m not going to believe they have him until I see him in the orange jumpsuit. You’re so big on trust, and me trusting you. I do trust and when these things come up I do what you suggest because you’re smart and you know what you’re talking about. But you don’t trust me. You never fucking trust me and I’m telling you, you cannot go in there. I don’t care if they say that have him. How do they even know it’s him? And even if they do have him he’s crazy and he would set something up. Do you honestly think it’s just a coincidence that my door is unlocked? Trust me Justin, you don’t know what he’s capable of.”

         Now he’s actually thinking, finally. He licked his lips and grabbed Brady from my arms, “Alright, come on.” I followed closely behind Justin with Tiny right behind me.

         “Mommy,” Brady’s little eyes opened as he looked back at me, “Mommy I’m tired. I just wanna go to bed.”

         “I know sweetie, we’re working on it.”

         “But we live there,” he pointed to the building as we walked away, “We gotta go that way.”

         “You’re going to stay at my house tonight buddy,” Justin answered with a smile as he buckled him in the car.

         “No, that’s ok. I just wanna go to sleep Justin.”

         “Yeah, but Justin has that cool bed, remember Brady? Just a little longer, rest your eyes,” I said as I crawled in next to him. I just want this whole thing to be over. How can the door be unlocked? I know for a fact that I locked it, and checked because I’m fucking paranoid. Although clearly I have reason to be. But I don’t understand how. The window wasn’t broken, how does he just unlock the door?

         I swear it’s like every time I think my life is going to work out something happens to bring me back to reality. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. There’s only so much I can give and it’s getting chipped away rather quickly.

         After I got Brady washed up and put him to bed I went in to Justin’s room. He took off his shirt and changed into a pair of sweatpants as I walked in. “Hey, Rachael sent up some sweats.”

         “Thank you,” I answered softly as I got changed.

         “How’s he doing?”

         “Brady? He’s fine. Just real sleepy.” I hate this weird awkward stuff. I don’t have much to say to Justin right now, I just want to go to sleep and wake up with all of this gone.

 I climbed under the covers as Justin turned off the lights. He wrapped his arms around me and whispered, “It’s going to be ok.”

“It’s not though, you have no idea how many times I’ve heard that. He was in my house, that’s not ok. We were gone for not even twenty four hours and he was inside my apartment.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do, who else would have been in my apartment?” he really doesn’t think sometimes and it’s starting to piss me off. I know I’m trying real hard not to be a bitch and push him away but he just doesn’t get it. He tries to be all protective and take everything so seriously but when he needs to really listen he won’t. It’s like he thinks I’m overreacting.

“I don’t know, but I mean they have him.”

“So then I should be worried about someone else breaking into my apartment?”

“That’s why we should have gone in and seen what was going on.”

“You know Justin, I really don’t want to deal with this right now. It’s obviously Gabe, I don’t have a list of people out to get me.”

“They have him.”

“You can say that as many times as you want but I’m not going to believe it until I see him. I’m done talking about this.”

“Alright then, goodnight.”

“Yeah, goodnight,”

That’s fine, be an asshole. I don’t even care anymore. I grabbed his sweatshirt that was on a chair and went out on the balcony from his room.  There has to be some way for me to clear my mind and actually figure out what is going on in my life. I can’t hide out here forever. If they didn’t get Gabe what if they can’t even find him? We’ll have to leave. We should just leave. I don’t know where we’ll go but we can just head east and drive. Although my car probably won’t make it too far and I sure don’t have any money saved to start over.

God, I need my mom. She would know what to do. I’m really fucking with Brady though. He’s finally found a school that he actually likes and he’s making friends. Then he has that amazing stripper mother who is scared of her own shadow and a father that is trying to hunt us down for a reason unknown to everyone. If Brady makes it to his twenty-first birthday without years of therapy it will be a miracle.

 I heard the door to the balcony open and managed not to jump three feet in the air. I know it’s Justin but I kind of want him to go away. All this thinking makes me feel that I may actually be close to a solution. Yeah right, back to reality.

“Aren’t you cold?” Justin asked as he sat down next to me. I shook my head and continued looking at the stars. “We’ll go early in the morning, right after we drop Brady off then you’ll feel better.”

“Then I’ll feel better,” I repeated. “Do you really think that I’m just coming up with all this in my head? Seriously Justin, you’re like so worried and so protective and then you think I’m overreacting when my apartment door is unlocked.”

“I don’t think you’re overreacting, I don’t. I just think you get really worried sometimes and don’t think everything through. And that’s fine, I mean it happens, but you have to just sit back sometimes and let everything sink in. The cops called you and said they had him.”

“Then how do you explain it?” I shouted looking in his eyes for the first time.

“I don’t know baby, but we’ll figure it out.” Justin said as he wiped under my eyes. Dammit, I thought it was too dark for him to tell I was crying.

“How are we going to figure it out? This isn’t something that I’m just going to sit back and see how it unfolds. I don’t trust Gabe Justin, who knows what he’s capable of.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. We’re going to go in tomorrow and figure everything out. We’ll have the police there and we’ll explain everything to them and they’ll come with us to your apartment and we’ll see that everything is alright.”

I hate that he’s so glass half full with all this. Gabe is fucking crazy and for once I want him to tell me the truth instead of sugarcoating it. “And what happens when everything isn’t alright? What happens when he’s not the one the cops found or they couldn’t hold him?”

Justin took a deep breath as if he was trying to figure out how to answer. He doesn’t know the answer, no one does. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you guys. You have to trust me on that. I’m not letting you out of my sight and if that asshole wants to get close he’ll have to go through me first. I may not be too big but I’m strong, especially when it’s over people I really care about. I’m not afraid to kill him. I have good lawyers; I won’t spend more than a couple years in prison. I can handle that.”

It’s really annoying that he can turn everything around and make me laugh when I’m supposed to be mad at him. He always does that. I guess it’s a good thing in reality.

“There’s that smile,” he continued with a chuckle, “It’s going to work out Chloe, it has to.”