Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
She couldn’t keep it up, I assured myself, laying out the boxes of sushi and grabbing plates. “I figured we’d split everything,” I said, arranging chopsticks, napkins, and packets of soy sauce.
Soon enough, our meal was set up, and we were eating in what might look like friendly companionship. But I knew what our meals had been like before this. We’d never run out of anything to talk about.
I tried anyway. “Did you make any progress finding a second case to focus on?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said, nodding and chewing thoughtfully.
“Did you pick one?” I probed. “Or did you narrow it down?”
“I think I picked one,” she said and popped another piece of sushi in her mouth.
Fuck. This was like pulling teeth. Before, just the first question would have been enough to get her going. She would have spilled everything, interested in a second opinion, or what I thought of the details of the case. But now she didn’t care what I thought. She didn’t particularly want to be talking to me at all.
I figured she would break before I did. She couldn’t keep up this pretense.
I was wrong. She could, and she did. Dinner stretched, silence punctuated by my barely answered questions.
I was the one who broke, my hand shooting out to grab her wrist as she moved to stand and clear the table after dinner. I had a sudden vision of her disappearing into her room with her laptop and not seeing her again till morning.
“Sylvie,” I said. “Wait.”
“No.” Her voice came out flat, like a smack to the face—worse for its lack of emotion.
“I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “Do you know what you’re sorry for?” She yanked her wrist out of my hold, picked up our plates, and circled the table to put them in the dishwasher.
I followed her into the kitchen. “I should have told you about Silas,” I said. “About who he was, that he was missing, and how that connected with Emily Shaw’s death.”
“Her murder,” she reminded me.
“Her murder,” I said. “I didn’t do anything differently because of Silas.”
Sylvie’s eyes narrowed on me, and she gave an abrupt shake of her head, rejecting my statement. “You can’t know that. And that’s not the point.”
“I don’t know what the point is,” I said. “I don’t know how to apologize.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “Look, I wouldn’t expect you to prioritize someone you just met over your boss, who you’re worried about. It’s fine.”
The words were right, but the tone was all wrong, because it wasn’t fine. And I realized I had a choice between two worlds.
One was the world where Sylvie let me off the hook, because of course I wouldn’t have told her. We barely knew each other. Our search for Silas was protected by the NDA, but still top secret. And it was important. I was worried. Sylvie wasn’t even a client. Worse, she was a journalist.
But in that world, Sylvie wasn’t important—and that wasn’t the world I wanted to live in.
I wanted the world where she was furious and throwing things at me, because even though we’d only known each other a few days, she mattered. I should have told her what was going on with Silas. Not just because it impacted our search for whoever had killed Emily Shaw and tried to kill Sylvie, but because she was important to me. In that world, I was a raging asshole, but I’d take it if we could both agree that Sylvie mattered.
“Look,” I said, “I handled this all wrong. I just… I kept thinking I’d talk to you about it later, and then—”
“Later came sooner than you thought,” she said, looking past me so she didn’t have to meet my eyes. “Eli, I told you it’s fine. Emmett said we’re getting closer. We’re going to find the guy who blew up my van and killed Emily, and then I can go back to my life, and you can go back to finding Silas and whatever else it was you were doing. No harm, no foul, okay? Let’s just let it be that.”
I stood in front of her, hands at my sides, utterly without words.
Maybe I’d been reading this all wrong. Maybe while I was lying next to her, putting up picket fences, she was just enjoying a few orgasms during an otherwise very inconvenient phase of her life. Maybe she wasn’t yelling and throwing things at me because she truly didn’t care.
And then I thought of her coming to stand next to me in the cemetery. Sylvie putting her head on my shoulder for comfort. The way she unraveled in my arms.
No, I wasn’t reading this wrong.
“Eli,” she said. “I’m just going to—”
She moved as if to walk past me, and I broke, closing my hands over her shoulders. I stopped her. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” I said.