Too Late

Asa begs Sloan to stop letting Luke touch her. She says she hates him. In front of Asa, she tells Luke she loves him, and he says it back as Asa smashes his own head against the mantel. He begs them to kill him. Instead, Sloan says that she wants him to think about her having Luke’s babies while he’s in prison. They’ll celebrate Asa’s birthday with a coconut cake every year. The police arrive and arrest Asa.

Luke and Sloan are staying at a new safehouse, and Luke has arranged for private surveillance to keep an eye on Sloan while he is at work. Luke worries about Asa enlisting others to help him get revenge. Asa is on house arrest until the trial and has to wear an ankle monitor, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use his dangerous contacts as a threat. On a happier note, Luke is impressed to find that Sloan is an amazing cook and is delighted when she has an idea for a cookbook. The framing would be that an abusive boyfriend forced her to cook, so she had to learn. The book would give her a chance to turn a bad situation into a more positive one. She would donate half the proceeds to abuse survivors.

Sloan learns that she might be pregnant and tells Luke, admitting Asa is likely the biological father. Luke hugs her and tells her not to apologize. When she says she’ll get an abortion, he is stunned that she thinks he is the one who is stressed about this. He says they’ll raise the baby no matter what because it is half her, regardless of Asa’s involvement.

Asa, still on house arrest, sees a news case about a rape committed by a white man who only received a few months of prison time. Asa is annoyed that the case got more coverage than his murder charge. Asa is losing a chance at notoriety, and Sloan keeps popping into his head. His psychiatrist wants him to resist thinking about her, but he is obsessed. He thinks that Sloan is like Eve and Luke is like the serpent. He thinks about all the good things about Sloan. At the same time, he wants her dead. Only that will allow him to move on. Killing Luke won’t be enough. She’s too far gone, and he’s not sure he wants to forgive her.

Asa has a plan. He has hired a man named Anthony to track down Sloan. Anthony arrives and says he found coconut cake, which is their codeword for computer. Asa needs a computer because the agents are monitoring any contacts he makes on his own devices. Asa has information on Anthony, so he trusts him enough to use his help.

Asa watches a 13-minute video of surveillance footage that Anthony recorded. Anthony rented an apartment across from Luke’s place to keep track of them. Asa sees Luke’s door open, followed by Sloan’s arm swinging a trash bag onto the porch. He still loves her and hates that Luke leaves her alone all day. On the footage, she smiles when Luke comes back with groceries. Asa sees her belly, which is unmistakably that of a pregnant woman. He smiles and cries and then tells the baby that he’ll be a genius like him.

Asa remembers thinking he would die as a kid after stealing his mother’s pills. Back then, his legs swelled with edema, which gives him an idea for his current predicament. Asa takes pills to induce edema in his legs. His probation officer, Stewart, visits each morning and gives Asa medicine, hydrochlorothiazide, to help reduce the swelling—not knowing that Asa has been causing it intentionally. Asa takes enough of the medication to drastically reduce the swelling in his ankles. This allows him to take off the monitor and transfer it to Anthony’s wrist. In the meantime, he calls obstetricians for two hours, claiming to be Luke, until he finds Sloan’s doctor.

Asa asks the doctor for information so he can make a surprise video for his baby. He learns that conception occurred in March, and Christmas is the projected birth date. Asa then breaks a mirror with a crucifix. He doesn’t want the baby if Luke has tainted it by having sex with Sloan. He takes more pills, looks at the crucifix, and says he knows a girl who needs to repent.

Sloan photographs 27 meals over two weeks as she preps the cookbook. She chooses to include some of Asa’s favorite recipes, like the spaghetti and coconut cake. Suddenly, she hears Asa ask her what smells so good. His ankle monitor is gone. Before she can escape, he drags her to the bed and pins her. He tastes the tears on her cheeks, and she says to get it over with. Asa says that the maintenance man unlocked the window for him for $2,000. Coming in through the window let him elude the surveillance camera.

Asa kisses Sloan and says he misses her. He demands that she kiss him back. When she apologizes, he thinks of it as “God’s apology” for everything that has gone wrong in his life. Asa says if she leaves again, he can’t be as forgiving. He cries and kisses her stomach as he thinks about the baby. Then he admits that he would have tampered with the birth control sooner if he’d known how good she would look pregnant. Sloan freezes but then quickly promises again that she won’t leave.

Sloan says what Asa needs to hear. He packs for her and then gets his crucifix and smashes a picture of her and Luke. She makes herself laugh along and points to a picture he missed. They have hours to wait until Luke returns home; Asa is determined to get revenge on him. Then Sloan realizes she didn’t take out the trash.

Luke and Ryan talk over pizza. It’s 12:06 pm, and Sloan hasn’t taken out the trash. Their surveillance guy always texts Luke at noon to say that she took the trash out, which is their signal that she is safe. When Luke calls, she doesn’t answer her phone.

He calls Thomas, his contact, who confirms that she hasn’t taken the trash out. As Luke drives to the apartment, a truck hits his car. He is injured but gets out and runs the final two blocks. He hears Asa’s and Sloan’s voices through the curtains. Sloan is in the kitchen with Asa. She sees Luke at the window and drops a fork on purpose. Luke shoots when she bends down to get it. When Luke gets inside, Asa is bleeding from the neck. Asa calls Sloan terrible names, and Luke shoots him dead.

Officers arrive as Sloan thanks him. They put Luke in an ambulance to take care of his injuries from the wreck. He says that Asa can’t hurt her anymore.

Seven months later, Sloan doesn’t talk about what happened in the apartment before Luke got there, but she does go to therapy consistently. She surprised Luke by saying she wanted to attend Asa’s funeral, where they were the only two guests. Sloan tells Asa he had potential but took his childhood out on everyone. She also says, “I forgive you. We both do” (361).

Luke looks down at his son, Dalton, sleeping in his crib. Now he thinks that when Sloan said they both forgive him, she probably meant herself and the baby, not herself and Luke. She bought a paternity test, but he throws it away because it isn’t important. He is Dalton’s father. They are a family, and nothing else matters.