On his way out, he stops by the door and looks back over the living room, the sofa, the neatly stacked books on the coffee table. It all feels so personal, like stepping through someone’s head.
Tom doesn’t know it yet, but Sam is inside his life now.
Watching.
Chapter 23
TOM
I’m sitting cross-legged on Pete and James’s absurdly neat guest bed, phone in hand, still in last night’s T-shirt. Pete’s just gone downstairs, all breezy smiles and “come down when you’re ready,” which I think is code for “take five minutes to have a mild breakdown before breakfast.”
And I do.
My mind is whirling with too many thoughts.
Pete’s bruised wrist.
The talk of James’s temper.
The vicious sex I witnessed between him and Sam.
And Chris. The ex who vanished.
I rub my temples, last night’s wine catching up with me.
Chris Christianson.
The name rattles around in my head like loose change. Sam had dropped it in so casually last night, like it was a punchline, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Who just vanishes? People don’t just vanish, not unless they’re in Netflix documentaries narrated by David Tennant.
I open Facebook, because of course I do. There are about ten Chris Christiansons, which feels excessive for a country this size. I scroll through them one by one—men holding fish, men holding babies, men holding beers. None of them look like they used to date Pete.
And then I find him.
He’s smiling in every photo, all white teeth and blonde hair, and—oh god—there’s Pete, arm slung around him in one of them. They look happy, genuinely happy, the kind of happy that makes my stomach twist. I don’t know why it hurts—Pete’s allowed a past—but seeing it is like pressing on a bruise I didn’t know I had.
Then I see the tag. Emma Christianson. Sister. I click.
Her timeline is a mixture of dog memes and increasingly desperate posts:
My brother has been missing for two years. He was last seen around the Bristol area. Please share. If anyone knows anything—anything—please contact me.
The air leaves my lungs like I’ve been punched. Missing. Not just “moved to Spain and forgot to tell anyone,” butmissing-missing.
My phone buzzes, making me jump so hard I almost drop it. Craig.
“Morning,” I whisper, glancing at the door like James might materialise there any second.
“You sound like you’re hiding under a bed,” Craig says.
“I might as well be,” I hiss. “Craig, I think James is abusive. And controlling. And Chris—Chris Christianson—is missing.”
There’s a pause. “What? Who?”
“Pete’s ex. Blonde. Cheekbones. Sam mentioned him again last night, got his full name. And I found his sister on Facebook. She’s been posting for two years about him disappearing.”
Craig sighs, the long-suffering kind. “Tom, you have a gift for choosing the most dramatic men possible.”
“I’m serious,” I whisper-shout. “I saw James and Sam last night — together, like having sex together—”
