As I look at her, the low light catches the side of her face, and something about her expression—open, certain, completely unbothered by the effort this would take—pulls at me.
“Why do you care?”
She tilts her head, a small line forming between her brows like the question genuinely puzzles her.“Why wouldn’t I?”
I don’t answer as the night the bus broke down flashes in my mind, the way she waded in and helped without once looking around to see who was watching.No angle.No ask.She’d just done it and moved on like it was nothing, like that was simply who she was.
Yet she’s leaving, has been since the moment she got here.This is a job, a deadline, and she has a life waiting elsewhere.I know this.
So why does she keep acting like she’s here to stay?
Chapter29
Grace
Ilock the front door behind me when my phone rings.I fish it out of my pocket and freeze.
Toby.
My heart does something complicated.We haven’t spoken in weeks—only texts, clipped and functional.The Vitale situation hasn’t moved, at least not that I’m aware of, and he gets daily updates on the feature.There’s no obvious reason for him to be calling.
Except… Blane’s back in the office.
The thought lands like a stone.I’d sent him packing with enough weight behind my words he shouldn’t dare—but Blane has always been better at nursing a grudge than letting one go.Would he walk back into the paper and say something?Use what he saw out here as leverage?
I press accept before I spiral.
“Toby.”I jog toward the car, already running the math on how late I can afford to be.
“Buchanan, did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Maybe.”I drop into the driver’s seat and hit the start button.“I’m on my way to the memorial for Hartley’s father.”
My last text to him had been about this and how I wasn’t sure it was a fit for the feature.It’s strange to sayHartley’s fatherthe way I might say any other subject’s next of kin—clinical, professional.
But the words feel wrong now in a way I wouldn’t have predicted when I first arrived in Winslow Grove.Somewhere along the way, the story stopped being the only thing I could see.
That’s the problem, isn’t it.Or is it?
My journalist’s lens—the one I’ve honed and sharpened, the one that used to snap into focus the moment I walked into a room—is slipping.Not all at once, but in increments.Moments where I forget to take mental notes.A conversation with Maddox where I’m simplypresent, not compiling.
I still know what belongs in the feature and what belongs only to us, that line I hold carefully, but the effort it takes to hold it has changed.It used to be instinct.Now, it’s a choice I have to make consciously, over and over, every time he looks at me in a way that has nothing to do with the feature.
I’m not sure when that shifted, and I’m not sure it matters anymore.
“I’ll keep it short.”Toby’s voice pulls me back.“Wickes and I have been talking.”His pause is deliberate, the kind he uses when he’s measuring what to give away.“About putting someone else on the Vitale story.”
I slam the brakes, and the car lurches to a stop in the middle of the empty street.My grip tightens on the wheel.
“What?”The word comes out harder than I intend.“Did something happen?Did Vitale?—”
“No,” he cuts in cleanly.“We’re still in negotiations.Nothing has changed.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“It’s just a conversation, Buchanan.Nothing’s been decided.”
Just a conversation.