She kept talking, rambling about expenses, about trying to keep things afloat… but my mind was already running ahead.
Bryan had been covering the clinic’s shortfalls for months, stepping in every time things slipped, and right around then Angela had offered Elena that partnership. I’d thought it was a recognition of her work, something she’d earned, but the timing fit together too neatly to ignore. The buy-in wasn’t a reward; it was a way to funnel Elena’s savings into a clinic already sinking.
I tried to tell myself Angela wasn’t calculated like that, that she’d just been desperate and not thinking straight, but the pieces clicked into place anyway. And Elena… she couldn’t have known.
The realization carried its own kind of shame.
I looked at Angela. Mascara-streaked, wine-soaked, falling apart on her couch… and tried to find the woman I thought I knew. The one who was struggling and needed help.
She wasn't a bad person. She was just... lost.
Right?
I sank onto the arm of the couch and tried to breathe.
"Okay," I said slowly. "Okay, so we figure out another way. I'll talk to Elena, explain that?—"
"You're not listening to me." Angela's voice went hard, almost feral. "Elena… she gave me an ultimatum."
My stomach dropped. "What do you mean?"
"She told me I have until tomorrow night to tell Bryan everything." Angela's hand was shaking around the glass. "If I don't, she's sending him the footage herself."
The words knocked something loose in me.
Elena, my calm, gentle Elena who cried over old dogs and whispered apologies to animals she vaccinated.
She'd given Angela a deadline.
"That's..." I started, then stopped. I didn't know what to make of it. Except… no. I knew exactly what this was.
Elena didn't fuck around. She never had. There was a steel in her that most people didn't see because she kept it sheathed. But I'd seen glimpses over the years. In the quiet way she survived her mother’s death, in the grit that built her career from nothing, and in the way she stared at me tonight, like she was bracing for confirmation that I wasn’t who she thought I was.
I should have known Elena wouldn't just cry and crumble.
"So yeah," Angela said flatly. "We're fucked."
She dropped onto the couch beside me. I could smell the wine on her breath, the stale perfume, the desperation coming off her in waves.
The lamp cast everything in dim yellow light, shadows pooled in the corners of the room. Outside, a car passed, headlights sweeping across the blinds and disappearing. The silence pressed in.
I was so tired, bone tired. The kind of exhaustion that goes deeper than sleep, that settles into your marrow and makes everything feel far away and muffled. My defenses were down, the weight of the night crushing what little resolve I’d been clinging to.
"Matt," Angela said quietly. Her hand found my knee, gave it a small, searching squeeze. "What are we going to do?"
I looked at her, at this woman I'd risked everything for, thrown away my marriage for… and all I saw was someone small and fragile.
Her hand slid higher. Her face tilted up toward mine.
"Angela—"
"We're already fucked," she whispered. "What's one more?—"
And God help me, I wanted to. How easy would it be to just give in, lose myself in her the way I had before, let the heat and the skin and the not-thinking take over? Let it wipe everything out. The pain in Elena’s face, the footage, the fire chewing through my life.
It would feel good. For a few minutes, it would feel sofuckinggood.
Angela’s fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt, and she leaned closer. I could feel her breath on my neck, and my body was responding even as my mind screamed at me to stop.
