There’s silence on the other end. She’s contemplating it.
“I know this is a lot,” I say, softer now. “But I got you. You don’t have to fix this alone.”
Sable still doesn’t speak.
“I just want you to enjoy the rest of your birthday,” I add. “Eat the cake. Let Demi say some wildly inappropriate shit. Sit in that beautiful yard of yours and let yourself breathe for a damn second.”
Nothing.
So I push it a little further, just enough to draw her out. “You reached out,” I say. “That’s something, right? Means you’re still thinking about me?”
Her voice returns, this time lighter. “Maybe I just wanted to make sure the cake wasn’t poisoned.”
I chuckle, resting the bourbon glass on the side table next to me. “If I wanted to poison someone, Legs, I’d use something they wouldn’t see coming.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
I shrug to myself. “But it’s honest. I know how much you appreciate that.”
And she laughs. A real laugh. Short, but real. And fuck if that doesn’t settle something wild inside me.
We sit there, only breath passing between us through the phone.
“You’re really going to take care of it?” she asks softly.
“You have my word.”
She sighs, a quiet, trembling sound that carries the weight of everything she’s been holding in since the pictures showed up.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
And just like that, I know I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this. Because she didn’t just call me.
Shetrustsme.
I lean against the end of the bar, sipping burnt black coffee and watching Will line up coasters with military precision. Lemon oil and bleach cover every inch of the bar’s air, which means he’s been here since the ass crack of dawn scrubbing out the sins of last Friday’s lunch.
JT’s perched on a barstool nearby, hoodie up, headphones slung around his neck, wearing that smug little smirk he gets right before doing something deeply illegal.
“She still alive?” Will asks, not looking up from the rag in his hand.
JT grins without humor. “Unfortunately.”
Ashley. No one says her name anymore. Around here, she’s just Bat Shit.
“She’s made a big fucking mistake,” I say flatly. “She’s screwing with someone that’s mine.”
JT taps away on both his laptop and phone, then flips the screen toward me. A tangle of code, routing pings, and server logs flash across it.
“Got her cloud access. Phone’s wide open. Emails, texts, app data—everything. She’s been using a third-party vault for the pictures, but once I isolate the backup pathway, they’re gone. Permanently.”
“You’re sure?”
He raises a brow. “Hex. If you want me to nuke her digital footprint from orbit, I can make it look like she never existed.”
Will snorts. “Or we could just make sure she doesn’t.” I glance at him. He shrugs. “What? I’m just saying. Fewer loose ends.”
JT gives him a lazy side-eye. “We’re not doing body disposal on a Monday. That’s a weekend problem.”
