جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

Chapter 61 — Sophia Watches POV: Sophia I noticed it before he said a single word about it, the way I'd learned to notice most things with Marcus, watching for the pattern underneath the explanation rather than the explanation itself. His phone stayed face down at dinner these days, which meant something on it mattered enough to hide. He checked it twice during our daughter's bath, quick glances he thought I didn't catch, his expression shifting each time in some small, private way I recognized from before we ever left this city the first time. "Who keeps texting you," I asked one evening, not really a question, more a test of whether he'd bother lying. "Work stuff. Nothing important." "You check work stuff like that? At bath time?" "Sophia." "That's not an answer. That's my name." He didn't respond to that, just slid the phone into his pocket and went back to lifting our daughter out of the water, and I let it go for the moment, filing it away the way I'd learned to file mos

Chapter 63 — A Little Less Distance POV: Liam Hale Emma had a habit of tapping her pen against her notebook when she was thinking, three quick taps, then a pause, then three more, like her brain ran on some rhythm the rest of her hadn't caught up to yet. I noticed it during group work in a way I hadn't noticed much of anything about anyone in a long time, not because I was trying to, just because she was there enough now that the small things had started registering without my permission. She talked faster when she got excited about something, tripping over her own sentences until she had to double back and start again. She muttered sarcastic comments under her breath at things the teacher said, just loud enough for me to catch, not loud enough for anyone else to. She didn't seem bothered by silence, which I'd already figured out weeks ago, but I kept noticing it again anyway, like it was new information every time. We got paired together for a lab write-up on a Thursday, stuck at

Chapter 65 — What Sophia Sees POV: Sophia Lang I noticed the pattern before I let myself name it. Marcus left earlier most mornings now, some meeting he hadn't mentioned the week before, and came home later, phone in hand before he'd even taken his coat off. He'd started knowing things about Liam's schedule he had no obvious way of knowing, a swim meet date, a school event, details that meant he was tracking something he claimed to have no access to. I wasn't watching him obsessively. I didn't need to be. I'd spent enough years learning the difference between Marcus being busy and Marcus being somewhere else entirely, and lately he was somewhere else constantly, sitting across the dinner table from me with his body in the room and the rest of him already gone. I found the email by accident, his laptop still open on the kitchen counter where he'd left it while he went to take our daughter from the nurse. A consultation request, drafted but not yet sent, addressed to a family law at

Chapter 67 — Civil Contact POV: Elena Voss The email from the school arrived on a Monday, some detail about an after-school study session for the students preparing for the same academic showcase, requiring parent sign-off since it ran past normal hours. I read it on my way out the door for work and made a note to stop by the front office that afternoon, nothing more complicated than that. Thelma was already there when I arrived, standing at the counter with her own form, checking her phone in the brief pause between one task and the next. She looked up when I walked in, and something in her expression suggested she'd been caught mid-thought and hadn't fully composed herself for the interruption. She looked tired in a way that went beyond a long day. Darker circles beneath her eyes than the last time I'd seen her. Her movements were slightly distracted, checking her phone again almost immediately after putting it away, apologizing to the administrator for something I hadn't caught

Chapter 70 — The Limit POV: Elena Voss Liam came home on a Wednesday, dropped his bag by the door, answered my question about his day with a single flat word, and went upstairs before I'd finished setting the table. I'd grown used to his quiet over the past two years, had learned to read the difference between ordinary teenage withdrawal and something heavier sitting underneath it. This was the heavier kind. His phone lit up twice while he stood in the doorway, and he glanced at it both times without reaching for it, his jaw tightening slightly each time. I didn't ask who it was. I already knew. The boundary had protected Liam from Marcus's decisions, I thought, standing alone in the kitchen once he'd gone upstairs. It hadn't protected him from the pressure of having to respond to them. I'd spent two years believing that keeping Marcus at arm's length was enough, that as long as I controlled the terms of access, Liam would be shielded from whatever damage might come through that d