CHAPTER FOUR

EVELYN

Three days into marriage, and I had already learned the sound of a silent lie.

It lived in the spaces between sentences. In the pause before I'm fine. In the way I rolled to face the wall every night before Oscar's breathing slowed, so I could let my face do whatever it needed to without him seeing.

He was a good man. He deserved better than a wife who lay beside him thinking about someone else. The problem was, I couldn't stop.

* * *

The first message came on day two. Unknown Number: We need to talk. I blocked it. Within sixty seconds, another number.

Unknown Number: Blocking me won't make this go away. My fingers typed before I could think about it.

Me: Stop.

The dots appeared. Disappeared. Then…

Eden: Seven days, Evelyn.

My stomach dropped.

Me: Seven days for what?

Eden: For you to remember who you are.

I put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down again. Then I threw it onto the other couch and stood in the middle of my living room with my arms crossed, furious at myself for the fact that my heart was hammering.

I was married. I was married. I was married.

I said it three times, like a spell.

It didn't work.

* * *

Mia came over that evening. She brought food she hadn't cooked and flowers she'd clearly grabbed from the shop on the corner, still in the plastic wrapper. She dropped onto my couch, kicked off her shoes, and pulled me down beside her like everything was normal.

For a while, it was.

We ate. We talked about nothing. She made me laugh twice about something the florist had said at the wedding. I almost felt like myself.

Then she said it.

"He's back, isn't he."

Not a question.

I looked at her carefully. "You saw the news."

"I did." She kept her voice light. Too light.

"He messaged me," I said.

"Ignore it."

"I did. He found a new number."

"Block that one too."

"Mia.."

"Eve." She turned to face me fully. "He's dangerous for you. Not because he's a bad person, but because of what you become when he's near you. You worked too hard. You came too far. Don't let him undo that."

I studied her face. The certainty in it. The sharpness.

"How did he know about the wedding?" I asked slowly.

She blinked. "What?"

"I didn't post the date publicly until three weeks ago. I kept the venue off social media completely. So how did he know where to show up? With a contract ready. With documents. How?"

Mia's mouth opened. Her phone buzzed on the table between us. I looked down.

Just for a second, But a second was enough. The name on the screen read: Eden. She grabbed the phone so fast she nearly knocked over her glass.

The room went still.

"Why," I said, very quietly, "does Eden Blackwood have your number?"

Mia set the phone face-down on her knee. She didn't speak.

"Mia."

"It's not, it's complicated, Eve."

"Start simple."

She exhaled. Long. Unsteady. "He contacted me before the wedding. Months ago. He wanted to know about you. If you were okay. If you were really in love with Oscar or just .."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you were happy. That you had moved on. That he was too late." She looked at me with something painful in her eyes. "I was protecting you."

I should have stopped there.

I should have accepted that and moved on.

But something in her voice, some small, wrong note, made me stay.

"Seven years ago," I said carefully, "when Eden left. I called him. Over and over. He never answered." I paused. "But you knew his number, Mia. Because he gave it to you, didn't he?"

Her silence was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

"He asked me to pass a message," she whispered. The floor moved beneath me. Or maybe I just felt it move.

"What message?"

Her eyes filled. "That he was coming back. That he had gone to build something. That he needed you to wait."

"And you didn't tell me." My voice was barely a sound. "You sat across from me while I fell apart. You held me while I cried. You told me he had probably met someone else. You told me to let go." The words came out one by one, each one heavier than the last. "And you were holding his message the entire time."

"I was eighteen," she said. "I thought I was helping. I thought if you waited, it would destroy you. I thought.."

"You thought you knew better than me." I stood up. "About my own heart."

"Eve…"

"Don't." I held up my hand. "Just. Don't."

She was crying now. Real tears, and I believed they were real, and somehow that made it worse — because how do you stay angry at someone who genuinely believed they were saving you from drowning when they were the one who had thrown you into the water?

My phone lit up on the couch.

Eden: You know now, don't you? I read the message. Then I read it again.

He had known she was there. He had known she was going to tell me tonight. Which meant he had spoken to her today. Which meant this conversation, this whole, devastating, relationship-splitting conversation, had been arranged.

He hadn't just come back. He had come back with a plan. And I had walked straight into the middle of it.