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All Chapters of Everything Except You: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

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Chapter 11: He saw her.

CHAPTER 11 He saw her. She was not the lead counsel from the courtroom, in the emerald green suit with a jury between them. This woman stood beside a safe in a sky-blue silk top with a side knot and a beige long pencil skirt, with her hair in a loose knot that had been losing its argument for hours and a few dark strands against her neck. She had taken off her jacket, and her heels were still on, and she looked like someone who had been working in a room where she believed nobody could see her, and for three years nobody had. Her face hadn’t changed. It was still small and delicate, even tired, with the lashes dark against skin gone pale under the office light, and when she turned toward the door her eyes caught the lamp, hazel going green at the edges, and it hit him low and without warning. They were Liyana’s eyes. He had spent almost three years not looking at that color for long, and now it was looking back at him out of the one face he had sworn he was done with. It was the fi

Chapter 12: I’m Told Possession Is Nine-Tenths

“Pens break,” Zoya said. “Not yours.” He set it down with care. “Not since the Henderson trial. Is there something I should know, Zoya? Because it feels like there is.” “There isn’t,” she said, to the file. He rubbed his forehead with two fingers, tired and bewildered. “He’s never come near this floor before. I’d feel better if I’d been here.” “Elias,” she said. “Come home with me.” He came around the desk and took the file gently from under her hand, the way he might have taken it from a child. “You haven’t eaten. I’ll drive you, and you can sleep for three hours before Alan calls.” “Alan is bringing the technician at midnight. I’m prepping her.” She took the file back, softly, and stood, because standing made it harder for him to hover. “Go home. I’ll call you when she lands.” He looked at her as though he wanted to say something else and was weighing what it would cost. “You tucked your hair behind your ear,” he said finally. “You do that when you’re tired.” “Then I’m tired.

Chapter 13: Whatever He is To Her

“Send it to me,” he said. “Not through Harrison.” He ended the call, and the phone went down against his thigh. “There’s an account on our legal archive,” he said, setting the words down one at a time, like exhibits. “Full read access, external. It was opened in your name three years ago, the week Adam came for Axis, and the request form has no requester on it. It was used that week. And it was used again five months ago.” “I never requested anything,” Zoya said, having stepped up to the threshold without noticing. “I’ve never even seen your archive.” “Three years ago Adam sat in my office and told me you were the one inside.” He didn’t raise his voice. “I believed him. I never saw how you did it. Now I have.” Five months ago was the Tuesday of the first envelope. She thought of the safe back down the corridor, the box she had shut inside it, and the small gray stamp along the bottom margin of the first page, three years old, the week of Edinburgh. On the sheet beneath it was a sec

Chapter 14: Elevator Heat

CHAPTER 14 Zoya got home a little after six, with dawn turning the sky gray over the walls of Joseph’s manor and the technician’s answers from their last prep session still running in her head. She showered in water just short of too hot, and she thought about the closet exactly once, for as long as it took to turn the tap colder. The small gray export stamp on the first page from the box took longer, and she had decided before she turned the water off that the box stayed in the safe, because she would win this case clean or she wouldn’t win it. She dressed in a black-and-ivory colorblocked shirtdress with a surplice neck and a belt at the waist, one of the few things she owned that made her look put together even when she wasn’t, then pinned her hair and put concealer under her eyes with more care than she had put into anything in days. She was still pulling on her charcoal blazer when she heard Riyana in the garden, deep into what sounded like a very serious meeting. The attendees

Chapter 15:Threats and Feelings

“I was looking at the dress.” He let that settle before he added, “It’s a good dress.” “You were not looking at the dress,” Zoya said, with heat creeping up her neck, and she hated that he could probably see exactly how far it had gotten. Of course he had noticed. He noticed everything, and he made a point of letting her know it. “You seem very sure of where I was looking, Ms. Fayez.” The corner of his mouth moved, and he turned the folder over once in his hand, in no hurry at all. “Give me my folder,” she said. “Ask nicely,” Raiyan said. The words landed differently here than they had in the closet, and they both knew it. Last night he had been holding her bra over his head and enjoying himself, but this morning his eyes were colder and his expression was too calm, and she could still feel the accusation from the archive account sitting between them. “I’m not asking you nicely for my own file,” Zoya said, tightening her grip on the blazer over her arm. “I remember,” Raiyan said

Chapter 16: Home Late

In the evening, the call was already in progress when Raiyan walked into the bedroom with Liyana’s dinner. It took him a second to place why the room felt warmer than it should, and then he realized it was just her, sprawled across the pillows with the phone propped against a cushion, presenting a stuffed rabbit to the screen with the gravity of a barrister making a closing argument. “—this one,” she was explaining, with her brow furrowed in immense concentration. “This is Bun Bun.” “Bun Bun,” Mei said, her face perfectly serious on the screen. “He’s cute.” “She,” Liyana corrected, very firm about it. “She. Obviously. I’m so sorry, Bun Bun.” Mei bowed her head to the camera in apology, and Liyana accepted it with a small, gracious nod before setting the rabbit down and reaching for the next item in her rotation, a small brown bear missing one eye, clearly the most important object in her current universe. “This is Teddy,” she announced. “Hi, Teddy,” Mei said, lowering her voice f

Chapter 17: Just in Case

“Harvard graduate. Thirty-eight. He lives with his mother.” Michael scrolled. “He hired Ms. Al Fayez two years ago, and he’s worked with her ever since. No scandals. No complaints, no lawsuits against him, not even a parking dispute. Never married. No partner on record. He’s still single.” Raiyan turned around. “That’s the whole file.” “That’s the whole file, sir,” Michael said. “A thirty-eight-year-old man who lives with his mother, and not one thing wrong with him.” Raiyan looked at the cracked glass on the table. “Nobody is that clean.” Michael glanced at the tablet. “Apparently he is, sir,” he said. ———- In the evening, The pink lilies went into a glass of water on the kitchen counter. Zoya couldn’t make herself throw them out, and she couldn’t stand to look at them either. She checked on Riyana, who had fallen asleep sideways across the bed with one foot on Brownie, and then she carried the quiet of the house back to her own room. Every word Faiyaz had said at the c

Chapter 18: People Who Leave

The envelope was waiting for Zoya on the kitchen table when she came downstairs. Melissa had left it beside her coffee with the rest of the morning mail, and Zoya reached for the cup first and only noticed the handwriting when she moved the stack out of the way. She knew it immediately, because it was Mei’s. Zoya put the coffee back down and picked up the envelope. She turned it over once, even though there was no need, and then she slipped her thumb beneath the seal. The card inside was cream and heavy, with small flowers around the border and two names printed across the middle in gold. Mei Leen and Evan Carter request the pleasure of your company. Zoya read it once, then again, and a laugh slipped out before she could stop it, short and surprised enough that Melissa looked over from the breakfast she was putting together. “Everything okay?” Melissa asked. “Mei is getting married,” Zoya said, still looking at the card. Melissa smiled. “That’s nice.” “Yeah,” Zoya replied, nodding

Chapter 19:

He looked at the name for a moment, and in her sleep Liyana’s fingers found his hand, so Raiyan silenced the call, set the phone face down on the coffee table, and looked back at his daughter. He picked Liyana up with the careful lift, her head sinking naturally into his shoulder and his palm supporting her back the exact way she liked, and he carried her upstairs to her room. Halfway up the stairs, Liyana shifted against him, her face settling deeper into his shoulder, and he thought that she had waited up for him just to fall asleep the second he came home. Zoya used to do that too. In London, Zoya had fallen asleep against the velvet armrest in their villa with case files spread across her lap and her reading glasses slipping down her nose, stubbornly pretending she hadn’t stayed awake for him. One lamp had still been on, warm against her pale skin, and dinner had been cold on the counter beside her, and the sound of his key turning in the lock had woken her before he’d even stepp

Chapter 20:

“Ms. Al Fayez!” Alan was crossing the lot at a jog with the cart bouncing behind him and two coffees held out in front of him. He pulled up between them, looked from one to the other, and visibly reconsidered his morning. “We’re due in ten minutes.” She took her eyes off Raiyan as though it cost her something, and she walked past him to the doors with her heels cracking against the asphalt. Dr. Paul Reeves had spent fourteen months on the East Basin with a field crew, and Zoya took him through it plainly, because the jury had been listening to technical evidence for three days and what they needed from this one was to believe him. The sampling grid went up on the screen, then the contamination maps with their rust-colored bloom spreading east from the Mansoor facility, then the well-comparison tables Alan had rebuilt over the weekend. She asked about Exhibit 14 and he gave the reading in a voice that carried to the back row, and in the second seat of the jury box a woman in a green c

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