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Chapter 95: The Pull
publish date:
2026-05-04 17:24:47
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EYES OPEN Chapter 95: The Pull
Derek calls again on Wednesday.I do not pick up.Not because I am avoiding him. Because I am in the middle of something that requires my full attention and I tell myself that is the only reason and I almost believe it.He calls again Thursday morning.I am in the shower and Rhys answers my phone.I find this out when I come out and Rhys is sitting on the bed with the phone in his hand and an expression that is doing several things simultaneously."He called." "I know. I saw the first one yesterday.""You did not tell me," he says. Not accusing. Noting.I look at him.He is right.I did not tell him and I did not examine why I did not tell him and I am examining it now in real time while standing in our bedroom in a towel and it is not a comfortable examination."What did he say?""He wants to meet," Rhys says. "For coffee. He said he has something he wants to say in person."The bedroom is very quiet."What did you tell him?""That I would pass on the message," Rhys says. His voice
EYES OPEN Chapter 94: The Message
He texts the next morning.Not an unknown number, not Stanley relaying something, his actual number which I never deleted because deleting it felt like a statement and I was done making statements about Derek a long time ago. It was good to see you. You look like yourself. The real version. I am glad."I read it standing at the kitchen counter at seven am with Rhys in the shower and Arlo on my feet and the October morning doing its thing outside.I read it three times.Not because I do not understand it...Because I am deciding what it does to me and I want to be honest about the answer before I do anything with it.It does something.Not what it would have done six months ago. Not longing, not grief, not the particular ache of good on paper and peonies bought on guilt. Something quieter and more complicated. The specific feeling of seeing someone you shared years with show up as the person they should have always been and knowing with complete certainty that the timing of it does no
EYES OPEN Chapter 93: He Shows Up Better
I see him across the restaurant on a Friday evening.Not at my table. Not approaching. Just there, at the bar with a glass of something amber, in a suit that fits differently from how his suits used to fit, like he stopped buying clothes to impress people and started buying them for himself, which is a distinction that shows.He has not seen me yet.I have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with that.Rhys is in the bathroom.Priya and James are across the table from me mid conversation about something I am no longer hearing because my entire nervous system has just registered Derek Vann twenty feet away looking like a man who did the work and it shows.He turns.Sees me.Does not smile immediately the way he used to, that automatic charm reflex. He just looks, for one second, like a person who has been surprised by something and is deciding what the honest response is.Then he nods.Once. Respectful. Not cold.I nod back.Priya, who misses nothing, stops mid sentence."Wh
EYES OPEN Chapter 92: What Felix Hears
He knows before we tell him.I realise this on Thursday morning when I am leaving for the Dom Pearce podcast and Felix's door opens as I pass it and he looks at me with the dark eyes doing something different from usual, quieter, more inward, and he says, "You look like someone carrying good news carefully."I stop.Look at him."What does that look like?""Like someone who is trying not to smile too obviously in case the universe notices and charges them for it," he says.I look at him for a long moment.Felix Adler in his doorway with his suit jacket and his morning coffee and his specific way of seeing things that other people walk past."I am going to tell you something. And you cannot tell anyone.""I know almost nobody in your life," he says."Perfect," I say. "I am pregnant."He looks at me.Something happens in his face that is warm and real and also briefly something else, something personal and private that passes before I can name it."Congratulations," he says quietly. Mea
EYES OPEN Chapter 91: Keeping It
I make it to Wednesday.Which is better than I expected and worse than I hoped because Wednesday arrives and Rhys is making eggs at the kitchen counter in his grey shirt with his sleeves pushed up and Arlo is sitting on his feet and the morning light is doing the thing through the east window and I am standing in the doorway watching him and I think, I cannot hold this another three days.He looks up.Reads my face."What is it?" he asks.He always knows.He has always known.I cross the kitchen and I take the test out of my bag where it has been living since Tuesday and I put it on the counter between us.He looks at it.Very still.The eggs are still on the stove making quiet sounds.He looks at the test for a long time.Then he looks at me and his expression is doing something I have not seen before, wide open and completely unmanaged and full of something so large it has not found its shape yet."Camille..." "I know," I say. "The timing is...""Camille," he says again, and he com
EYES OPEN Chapter 90: On This Day
I find out on a Tuesday.Not because I was looking. Because my body decided Tuesday was the day it was going to make itself impossible to ignore and I spent the first twenty minutes convincing myself it was stress and the next twenty knowing it was not.The test is in the bathroom cabinet because I bought one three weeks ago for no reason I examined closely and then put it behind the paracetamol and did not think about it again.I think about it now.Rhys left for the site at seven.It is seven forty three.Arlo is sitting outside the bathroom door with his one white ear forward and his amber eyes doing the thing they do when he knows something is happening and has appointed himself witness.I sit on the edge of the bath and I wait.Two minutes is a very long time.I already know before I look.I look anyway.Positive.I sit there with the test in my hand and the bathroom doing its ordinary Tuesday morning thing around me, same tiles, same light, same sound of London beginning outside
EYES OPEN Chapter 16: Mother
My mother has three modes.Warm, which is her default and her best. Concerned, which arrives when she suspects something is wrong and deploys itself as a series of increasingly loaded questions disguised as casual conversation. And activated, which is what three words and a full stop at nine forty
EYES OPEN Chapter 12: The Mistake She Made
I figure out Vivienne's mistake at seven the next morning.I am standing at the kitchen counter with my coffee, scrolling back through every message she has sent from every number, laying them out in chronological order in my notes app like a timeline, and that is when I see it.She tipped her hand
EYES OPEN Chapter 10: Noise
I sit in the office parking lot for six minutes after hanging up on Vivienne.Just breathing.Not because I am scared. Because I need to be honest with myself about what just happened and what it means before I walk into a building full of people and spend eight hours pretending everything is norma
EYES OPEN Chapter 8: Morning Comes
I do not sleep much.Not because I am crying, not because I am falling apart, just because my brain refuses to switch off, cycling through everything on a loop like it is trying to make sure I have processed every single detail before it lets me rest.I lie there listening to the sounds of the apar
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