There was a woman across from him. Dark-haired, mid-thirties, something professional about her. There were papers on the table between them, but from the pavement, the light was too flat to be sure.
They were leaning toward each other.
I stopped walking.
He'd told me this morning, when I'd texted to ask about Friday, that he'd be working late.Busy day, probably won't finish until six.I'd said no problem, see you then.
And now here he was, at The Anchor.
I stood on the pavement outside and felt the world narrow to a point. I didn't go into pubs like The Anchor. It wasn't my scene, and I had no reason to be there, but I knew the street well enough.
Jack looked up.
Not at me—at something the woman was saying, something she'd put on the table between them. He looked at it with that attention he brought to things that mattered, and his face did the thing it did—the slight narrowing of the eyes, the tension in the jaw—and I… I just stood there. Then I realized I couldn't feel my hands.
Jack had said he'd be working late, and now he was at a pub. With a woman.
I turned and walked.
I got back to my car and sat in it for a long time without starting the engine.
I thought about the bruise. The phone calls. The slightly-off quality of him this last week, present and also somewhere else, like he was managing something I didn't have access to.
I thought about twelve years ago and a Thursday in March, and I thought about the way I'd turned onto Calloway Street and seen his bike outside a bar.
I thought:stop. You don't know what that was. You don't know anything yet.
But I also thought:but you know what it feels like.
I started the car.
The drive home was ten minutes. I didn’t think about Jack once, which meant I thought about him with every rotation of the tires.
By the time I sat at my kitchen table, the diagnostic was complete. I looked at the apartment I’d been living in for two years and I could see the future with terrifying clarity. Or at least, one version of it.
The version where this was what it looked like. The version where I'd let someone in, and they'd taken a piece of me. The version where I had to rebuild from zero. I’d done it once already, twelve years ago, and I knew the protocol. I was good at starting over. I was an expert at building a life from nothing. I’d spent my entire adult career proving I could survive the subtraction of a person.
I pressed my hands flat on the table.
My phone buzzed.
Still on for Friday? Lily wants to watch the sequel.
I looked at his name on the screen for a long time.
Then I put the phone face down and sat in the quiet of my apartment, looking at the future and trying to remember how to breathe.
Chapter Fifty-One
Madison
Friday was a day away.
I kept returning to that number like a vital sign that wouldn’t stabilize.
I had twenty-four hours before I had to answer his text about the sequel; twenty-four hours before Lily would be standing at the window, counting on me; twenty-four before I had to walk into Cassie's house and look at Jack Henley while being a person who knew what she knew and didn't say it.
So, I went to work.