Chapter Two:Echoes and Entrances

Emma didn’t remember the elevator ride down. Or the lobby. Or the doorman politely holding the door as she stepped into the waiting black car.

She sat in the back seat, hands folded tightly in her lap, staring straight ahead like her brain had frozen.

Jake Reed.

The boy she once loved. The man she’d spent ten years trying not to think about. The man who now looked at her like a stranger who had stolen something from him.

And maybe she had.

The driver said nothing, and Emma was grateful. The silence wrapped around her like a cloak, thick and necessary. The city blurred past the window, but her mind stayed frozen in that penthouse. His voice. His face. The way her name sounded when he said it.

She didn’t think he’d ever forgive her.

She didn’t expect him to.

But she also didn’t expect… this.

“Some ghosts don’t go away until you let them walk through the door.” His words looped in her head like a slow moving storm.

She closed her eyes and leaned back, forcing herself to breathe. Long, deep, slow.

Jake had money now. Power. A name that lived in tech magazines and business journals. But none of it softened the truth she still carried like a bruise:

She had left him. Without a goodbye. Without a reason.

And that wasn’t something love survives.

Not even the kind they had.

The car turned onto a quiet street in Brooklyn Heights. Emma blinked, straightening up. Home.

It wasn’t much just a converted brownstone apartment with big windows and a tiny balcony but it was hers. And in a world she couldn’t always trust, it was the one place she still felt like herself.

As the car rolled to a stop, the driver leaned back and spoke for the first time. “You’ll be picked up Monday morning, Miss Lane. 7 a.m. sharp.”

She gave him a tired nod and stepped out, her heels clicking softly on the pavement.

---

Inside, the apartment was dim and quiet. A single lamp glowed near the couch. Emma dropped her bag by the door and kicked off her shoes, her body sagging into the soft cushions like it had waited all day to collapse.

A moment later, her front door opened.

Only one other person had a key.

“Noah,” she called out, not even lifting her head.

“You alive in here?” he called back, voice light, teasing.

She didn’t answer.

A second later, he stepped into the living room with two paper coffee cups and a bag that smelled like cinnamon and roasted almonds.

“I brought cookies,” he said, lifting the bag.

“I can’t eat right now.”

“Then I’ll eat yours too,” he said, settling beside her.

She gave him a weak smile and sat up.

Noah Hart was her business partner, her closest friend, and the one person in the world who knew every chapter of her life except one.

The Jake chapter.

He had asked once, years ago, about the box of photos she kept in the back of her closet. She told him they were old. Unimportant. He didn’t push.

Now she wished she had told him the truth. Because keeping it inside all these years had only let it grow teeth.

“You saw him,” Noah said after a beat, not needing to ask.

Emma nodded.

“How’d it go?”

She let out a breath that was half laugh, half sigh. “Like watching a train crash into your past and realizing you’re still standing on the tracks.”

“Harsh.”

“He hates me.”

“Understandable.”

She didn’t argue. She couldn’t.

Noah studied her face, his expression softening. “You okay?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I will be.”

That was their language simple, unpolished truths between two people who had no need for masks. Emma loved that about him. Loved the ease of being around someone who didn’t expect anything but honesty.

Still, this Jake was different.

“You don’t have to do the project,” Noah said carefully. “We’ve got other clients lined up. Bigger ones, if we land that downtown contract.”

Emma shook her head. “I already signed the contract. And part of me… I don’t know, Noah. Part of me needs to see this through.”

He didn’t reply right away. Just sipped his coffee and watched her like he was reading something she wasn’t saying.

“I don’t know the full story,” he said, finally. “But I know you. And if you left him, you had a reason. A good one.”

Emma looked away.

He was wrong.

Or maybe he wasn’t.

The truth sat in her chest like a locked door she’d thrown the key away from years ago. But standing in front of Jake today, she felt the lock turn. Not open. Just… shift.

“I should’ve told you,” she said quietly.

Noah looked at her. “Told me what?”

“About him. About Jake.”

He smiled, a little sad. “I figured it out a long time ago.”

She blinked. “You did?”

“I’m your best friend, Em. I know what a scar looks like when you’re trying to hide it.”

Her throat tightened.

“I won’t ask questions you’re not ready to answer,” he said. “But just know I’ve got you, okay? Always.”

She nodded, trying not to cry.

It wasn’t fair. Jake was her past. Noah was her present. And somehow, both hurt in different ways.

“Monday,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

“You ready to face him again?”

“No,” she said. “But I will.”

That night, sleep came slowly.

She lay in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, memories flooding her like rain on glass. Jake’s hands in hers. His laugh. The way he said her name. The day she left.

She remembered standing at the bus stop that morning, watching the sun rise over the empty road, knowing she was about to break two hearts with one decision.

She had thought it was the right thing.

But maybe the right thing was never enough.

Now, she had three months to finish a job. Three months to survive working with a man who used to love her. A man who now barely looked at her without anger in his eyes.

A man who, once upon a time, was her whole world.

And maybe, just maybe, still was.