EYES OPEN

I notice the smile first.Not the one Derek gives me when I walk into the kitchen in my good jeans. Not the one he saves for his boss or his mother or anyone whose opinion he actually cares about. This is a different smile entirely. Smaller. Private. The kind a person makes when they think nobody is watching.He is sitting at the dining table with his phone face-down beside his plate, and he is smiling at absolutely nothing."Funny meme?" I ask, setting my glass down across from him.He looks up. The smile adjusts itself so fast it almost gives me whiplash. "What?""You were smiling at something.""Was I?" He picks up his fork. "Just thinking about something from work."I nod and cut into my chicken and say nothing else.Here is the thing about Derek Vann that took me a while to learn. He is an excellent liar. Smooth, quick, unbothered. The kind of man who can look you dead in the eye and tell you the sky is green and almost make you question your own vision. I married him knowing he

Derek calls at 9:47pm.I know the exact time because I am lying on my back in our bed, staring at the ceiling, watching the minutes tick over on the clock like they personally owe me something. His name lights up the screen and I let it ring twice, just long enough that answering feels casual."Hey," I say."Hey babe." His voice is easy. Relaxed. The voice of a man who is exactly where he said he would be. "Just got to the hotel. Traffic was insane getting out of the city.""Which hotel?"Tiny pause. Half a second. Most people would miss it."The Meridian. The one the company always uses.""Nice," I say. "Did you eat?""Yeah, grabbed something on the way. Listen, the signal here is pretty bad so if I drop off that is why."Bad signal. At the Meridian, which is a four-star hotel with wifi in every corner and a business centre on every floor because I looked it up eleven minutes ago."Okay," I say. "Sleep well.""You too. Love you.""Love you too."I hang up and set the phone down on his

I get there first.Deliberately.I want to see him walk in before he sees me. I want that five seconds of observing without being observed, the small advantage of knowing what I am dealing with before the interaction starts. Old habit. My mother called it paranoia. I call it preparation.Archer's is a corner cafe with exposed brick and good lighting and the kind of background noise that makes private conversations possible. He chose well. I pick a table near the window, order a black coffee, and sit with my back to the wall facing the door.Twelve minutes later, Rhys Callahan walks in.Okay.So the photos did not lie, they just undersold.He is tall, broader than I expected, wearing a dark jacket over a grey shirt, no tie, sleeves pushed to the elbows. He scans the room with the kind of practiced quiet efficiency that tells me he also wanted to get here first and he is mildly annoyed that he did not. His jaw is doing something tight and controlled and his eyes find me in about four sec

I sit on the edge of the bed with my half-packed bag beside me and I open my email.Rhys has forwarded something.A screenshot. From Vivienne's phone. I do not know how he got it and right now I do not care because what I am looking at stops every thought in my head completely dead.It is a conversation.Between Vivienne and Derek.From two and a half years ago.Two and a half years ago, and two months before Derek proposed to me.I read it once fast and then again slowly because the first time my brain refused to fully process it.Vivienne: Are you actually going to marry her?Derek: It makes sense. She is stable. Good on paper. My parents love her.Vivienne: And us?Derek: Nothing changes between us. You know that. You are getting married too, it is the same thing.Vivienne: It is not the same thing.Derek: Viv. Come on. You know how I feel about you. This does not change anything.Vivienne: Promise me.Derek: I promise.I stare at my phone screen until the words blur slightly.Stab

I read the message four more times in the elevator.I know about Saturday.The doors open at the lobby and I walk out into the morning like a woman who is completely fine, keys in hand, coffee in hand, because whoever sent this does not get to see me rattle. Not in a lobby. Not anywhere.I push through the front door into the cold air and I stand on the pavement and I think.Saturday. Archer's. Me and Rhys sitting across from each other at a corner table for nearly an hour. Who knew we were meeting? Nobody. I told nobody. Rhys told nobody, I am almost certain of that, but almost is doing a lot of work right now and I need to close the gap between almost and completely.I call him.He picks up on the second ring. "Hey.""Did you tell anyone about Saturday?" I ask without preamble. "Anyone at all. A friend, a family member, anyone."A pause. Short but present. "No. Why?"I read him the message.Silence."Send it to me," he says. His voice has shifted. Flatter. More controlled.I forward