Silver lake

Chapter 03

Evelyn's POV.

The question hung in the air like a blade suspended above my throat.

If Ethan walked upstairs and brought that drawing down, it wouldn't just be a sketch of a lake and a boat that Miguel would be holding in his hands.

 It would be us. 

My drawings had never been simple lines and shading.

 They told stories, captured faces in a right way that left no room for misinterpretation, and if Miguel stared at that page, he would see exactly what I had spent ten years trying to hide.

"No," I said quickly, my voice was sharper than I intended.

 "Ethan, go back to your room. Stay there, and let the adults talk."

The whole table seemed to freeze at once.

Angelo set his fork down slowly, his eyes moving toward me with quiet confusion, while Miguel's brows lifted, clearly caught off guard by the sudden chill in my voice.

"It's fine," Miguel said smoothly. "He can stay, I don't mind explaining whatever he wants explained."

"No," I repeated, my tone leaving no room for consideration. "He is not staying. Ethan, upstairs. Now."

I didn't care how cold I sounded, how sensitive I might appear to the two men watching me like I'd lost my mind over nothing.

 Miguel hadn't been there for a single night of fever, a single stretch mark, a single sleepless feeding at three in the morning. 

He had no claim, no right to summon authority over a child he didn't even know existed until twenty minutes ago, and I refused to let him start now.

Angelo cleared his throat, breaking the tension the only way he knew how. "Alright, that's fine. Ethan, go on upstairs, please."

Ethan ran off without refusing, and Angelo rose from his seat, clearly desperate for an excuse to escape the strange weight pressing down on the room. "I think we're out of wine," he said. "Let me go grab some."

The moment he disappeared down the hallway, the silence between Miguel and me became unbearable. 

I stared at him, and he stared back, and for the first time all evening I let myself search his face for any sign of recognition, any sign that the man sitting across from me remembered a single second of what we'd shared. 

There was nothing.

 No tightening around his eyes, no softness, no flash of guilt. 

Either he had erased me completely from his memory, or he had never cared enough in the first place for my absence to leave a mark.

I almost smiled at the thought, bitter and humiliating all at once, and lowered myself into the chair across from him, busying my hands with dishing food onto my plate just to have something to do that wasn't looking at him.

"Can I ask you something?" Miguel said suddenly.

I lifted my eyes to his. "What is it?"

"Do I know you?" he asked.

I held his gaze for a long moment, letting the question settle between us before I let my lips curve into a smile, though it wasn't the kind that softened my face.

 It was the kind that came from somewhere deep and exhausted, the smile of a woman watching a man pretend not to recognize the life he had once held in his hands. 

"Actually," I said, "you don't know me, and you never will."

I smiled wider after that, and to my surprise, Miguel smiled back, though his expression carried none of the certainty mine did. 

His was confused, almost searching, like a man standing at the edge of a memory he couldn't quite step into.

I reached for the knife beside my plate at the exact moment he reached for his, and our hands collided over the handle. 

Neither of us moved for a beat too long. 

His fingers stayed pressed against mine, and when I finally looked up, I caught something moving behind his eyes, something unguarded, as though touching me had become a current neither of us asked for. 

I pulled my hand back immediately, clearing my throat and forcing my attention back to my plate.

"So," I said, refusing to let the moment stay long, "you and your fiancée. You said you ended things, mind telling me why?"

I asked it lightly, almost playfully, but underneath it I knew exactly what I was doing. 

No matter how skilled he was at hiding behind that calm, unaffected face, a question like that would crack something open, even if just for a second.

"Oh, that," he said, shrugging as he reached for his glass. "We just ended things, nothing serious. It wasn't working out."

I blinked slowly, shaking my head as I forced a smile onto my lips.

Of course. 

That was exactly how men like him operated, sweeping years of someone's devotion under a single careless sentence, leaving the woman behind to wonder if she had simply imagined the weight of what they shared.

 "She knows what's best for her," I said quietly, and when our eyes met again, I caught it, the smallest shift in his expression, the first genuine crack underneath his calm self. 

I smiled to myself, satisfied.

 I had always loved watching a liar lose his footing, especially one who had spent a decade convincing himself he'd gotten away clean.

His eyes moved slow and unguarded, settling on the pendant resting against my collarbone. 

I adjusted myself, my fingers brushing close to it without quite touching.

"That pendant," he said, frowning slightly. "I feel like I've seen it somewhere."

My breath caught, and I opened my mouth, unsure even myself what I intended to say.

Suddenly, Angelo's footsteps echoed back into the room.

 "Did I miss something?" he asked, glancing between us.

"No, baby," I said quickly, reaching for his hand the moment he sat back down. 

I held it tightly, deliberately, and let my eyes move to Miguel just long enough to watch his gaze drop to where our fingers touched. 

A quiet satisfaction settled in my chest. 

Whatever Miguel thought he remembered, whatever ghost of the past had followed him into this house tonight, he needed to understand there was no space left here for him. 

I had built something solid, something real, and I wasn't about to let a man who once broke me without consequence wander back in, simply because fate had thrown us into the same room.

"Baby," I said, rising from my seat, "let me take some fruit up to Ethan since it doesn't look like we'll be having any more female guests tonight."

Angelo chuckled and nodded, and I moved toward the kitchen, fetching a plate and arranging a few slices of fruit with hands that were steadier than I felt.

 As I lifted the plate to carry it upstairs, Angelo's voice moved toward Miguel behind me.

"So you're traveling tomorrow," Angelo said. "Where to? Business?"

I kept walking with the plate balanced carefully in my palm.

"No," Miguel said. "Not business, just something personal." A pause stretched, brief but unbearable before he continued, "I'm heading to a town called Silverlake."

The plate slipped from my fingers before I even registered the sound of his voice finishing the sentence, shattering againt the floor in a violent crash of fruit, the noise echoing through the room like a confession neither of us had meant to make.