You Knew What I Was When You Picked Me Up Novels & Stories

I knew exactly what I wanted. And I was going to take it.

Saturday coming whether I was ready or not. I picked the bottle up. I'd made my decision.

The person who had been walking toward this specific moment since he was seventeen years old in a McDonald's at two in the morning and saw a door that nobody else had found. I know who you are. The thought arrived complete, the way thoughts did when they had been forming for a long time and had finally found the moment to be said. I know who you are. All of it — the plan and the staying past the plan and the truth told across a kitchen table and everything that had come after. All of it. I meant it the way I had meant nothing in six years. That was the whole of it. That was everything.

I crumbled to the ground. “I’ll come back for you.” He turned, and walked out the door, leaving me a broken mess on the floor. And just like that, my fate was sealed. I’ve been picked.

He looked at me with a silent gaze in his eyes, and I knew better than pressing the conversation further. Then I noticed the car behind them. A black limousine parked between the trees, its door already open. My heart sank. The man looked at me again. “You’ve been chosen.” The world seemed to tilt. I stared at the car, knowing that the moment I stepped inside, my life would never be the same again.

And when I come back, you will know exactly who you rejected. I did not know then how true that would become. I did not know what was already beginning inside me.

Wyatt picked up my limp body and carried me away. I guess I can get used to this...

But my mind was already racing. I clutched the phone tighter. “I knew it,” I whispered. Max blinked at me. “Knew what?” I swallowed hard. “Someone really did take it.”

Demand to be taken back. But deep down, I already knew the truth. Thiago never took no for an answer. So I stepped out. And the moment the door shut behind me, I knew— I was exactly where he wanted me to be.