I Remember the Wedding That Killed Me のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

I open the door before my mother can, because whatever happens in the next sixty seconds, I need it to happen on my terms and not hers.Four men, exactly as composed up close as they looked through the glass, the one in front holding a phone with what I assume is Marcus Ashford's authority glowing somewhere on the screen even though I can't see it. He smiles at me the way people smile when they've been trained to smile regardless of what's actually happening."Ms. Sterling. I apologize for the intrusion." His eyes go past me, into the hall, cataloguing — my mother, Celeste frozen on the stairs, Tobias somewhere behind me I can feel more than see. "We understand an Ashford Biotech employee entered this residence in the last several minutes. We're required to bring him in for an internal matter.""There's no employee here," I say, calm, pleasant, my father's own boardroom voice coming out of my mouth without my quite deciding to use it. "You're welcome to check with my fiancé if you'd l

I stand up before Damian can decide to do it for me, because whatever happens in the next ten seconds, I need Julian looking at me and not wondering why there's a stranger crouched behind a filing cabinet in his father's research annex at nine o'clock at night."Julian." I make my voice come out light, almost amused, like this is the most natural thing in the world. "You scared me half to death."His eyes go past me first, to Damian rising slowly from behind the cabinet, and something flickers across his face that I can't quite name — not recognition, not yet, but the particular wariness of a man cataloguing a stranger standing too close to his fiancée in an empty building after hours."Who's this," Julian says, voice still pleasant, still composed, but with an edge underneath it now that wasn't there a second ago."Damian Vale." Damian offers his hand like we're at a dinner party instead of trespassing in a records room, and Julian shakes it after only the smallest hesitation, the re

I find Reyna exactly where I told her I would, in the corner booth of the all-night diner two blocks from Mercy General, still in her scrubs, a cold cup of coffee cradled between both hands like she's forgotten it's there."You're late," she says, not looking up. "By about four days.""I know.""You said tonight, Ivy. That was Tuesday.""I know." I slide into the booth across from her, and for a second neither of us says anything, the diner's fluorescent hum filling the silence between us. "I'm sorry. Everything's been moving faster than I can keep up with.""Try me now."I look at her, this woman who's been my best friend since we were nineteen years old and stupid enough to break into a chemistry building on a dare, who watched a man's restraints tear apart six days ago and hasn't asked me to explain a single thing about it since, out of nothing but trust she has no real reason to still be extending me."I'm not going to tell you everything," I say. "Not tonight. Some of it isn't sa

Celeste's light is still on when I get home, a thin gold line under her bedroom door, and I stand in the hallway a long moment before I knock, trying to find some version of this conversation that doesn't end with her whole world coming apart a second time in one week.There isn't one. I knock anyway."Go away, Ivy." Her voice comes through the door thick, exhausted, already raw from hours of crying I wasn't here to see. "I don't want to talk about the wedding, or the tablecloths, or anything that isn't—""It's not about the wedding."Something in my voice must carry through the door, because I hear her get up, hear footsteps, and then the door opens and she's standing there in an old t-shirt with her eyes swollen and her hair a mess, looking about ten years younger than she did three days ago, looking, for the first time in longer than I can remember, like someone who actually needs me instead of resenting me."What happened," she says, and her voice already knows, already braced for

"Back door," I say, already moving, pulling Celeste by the wrist down the hallway away from the front windows. "Now. Quiet.""Ivy, if that's them—""Then we're not here when they knock." I don't stop moving, don't let her see how hard my own heart is slamming, because if I let either of us slow down long enough to be afraid, we lose whatever head start we still have. "Grab a coat. Nothing else. We move now."We go out through the same back door Tobias tried and failed to unbolt six days ago, out into the cold dark of the side garden, and I don't let myself look back at the house until we're through the gap in the hedge that borders the neighboring property, the one I used to sneak out through as a teenager for reasons that feel embarrassingly small now.Headlights sweep across the front of the house behind us as we clear the hedge, slow, deliberate, and I catch just enough of a glimpse through the branches to see that it isn't a company SUV at all — a single sedan, unmarked, idling at