He’d mentioned a potential lawsuit a few times in passing, but none of it seemed concrete. Not enough to warrant the kind of phone call I’d overheard.
His Captain’s voice had been grave on the other line. I hadn’t caught all the details, they’d been buried under a bunch of police jargon I couldn’t follow, but the implications had been clear enough. Things were escalating and moving forward in a way that couldn’t be ignored. And everyone involved needed to be prepared.
I hadn’t meant to overhear any of it. If anything, I’d tried to back out of the living room as soon as I realized what was happening, to give him the privacy he deserved. But as he’d turned around and his face came into view—along with the redness in his eyes and the tension in his jaw—everything inside me froze.
It wasn’t just worry etched into his features; it was something deeper. Something raw. And that was all it took for me to pull out my phone, thumb shaking slightly as I texted Avery to set up this meeting.
Marlow tagging along had been simply an afterthought.
I didn’t have the full story. I didn’t need it. All I knew was that Terran might need help, and that was reason enough for me to act. No overthinking, no second-guessing. Just action. Because if I couldn’t do anything else, I could at least make sure he had resources. A lifeline.
“What happened?” Avery tried again.
I opened my mouth to snap at him once more, to tell them both to drop it and back off now that I had a top one percenter’s lawyer’s contact info burning a proverbial hole in my pocket. But before I could, the words snagged in my throat, forcing me to swallow them down once again.
Guilt was such a fickle thing. Coming around to rear its ugly head at the worst of times.
We’d been down this road before, Avery and I. A tired, well-worn path that always seemed to lead back to the same crossroad. Weeks ago, I’d stood at this very fork-in-the-road, guilt heavy on my shoulders, and chosen to let him in. I’d extended the olive branch for pushing him and Marlow away for months before this, and now here we were again, facing the same damn problem, with the same goddamn subject attached to it, like we were trapped in some cruel cosmic loop.
Round and round like water spiraling down a drain.
How ironic, then, to be met once more with the same care and compassion from them both. A kind of steadfast loyalty that I absolutely didn’t deserve. All I ever did was take—time, patience, energy—and all they ever did was give it without question. Both of their souls burned so brightly, unwavering in their warmth, even when my own icy, closed-off nature tried to smother them.
They owed me nothing. Yet, here they were, as always, ready to offer support and understanding without ever asking for anything of it in return. All they wanted was for me to stop keeping them at arm’s length.
So simple in hindsight.
“I’ve...” The words were hard to force out, a jagged lump that refused to move even as I exhaled to steady myself and lean back in my chair to feel the back of it ground me. “I think... I’m in trouble.”
The words were poison on my tongue. Vile and far too vulnerable for me to handle. Yet, they were the truest things I’d ever spoken in my entire life.
Marlow leaned forward instantly, his chair kicking back a bit from the motion. “What kind of trouble? Whatever it is, we can deal with it. You know that.”
Avery didn’t speak right away but his gaze was locked on me, unrelenting. His confusion slowly gave way to realization, his eyes widening until they were practically bugging out of his face in astonishment.
My stomach churned.
How easy was it for him to read between the lines and figure it all out, figuremeout. We’d been friends for a long time, but there were still things I thought I was better at hiding. That I thought were easier to keep to myself without anyone else seeing through me.
Clearly, that was simply the hubris in me.
Every instinct screamed at me to retreat, to bury this conversation and let it die before it could go any further and lay myself bare to them both. It was easier to find comfort in my solitude and let that familiar blanket of it promise me safety away from this awful feeling of vulnerability.
Easier, yet, not at all helping me.
Because at the end of the day, I was completely lost on how to deal with any of this. I was terrified of letting my own self-sabotaging issues ruin something that... that I was beginning to want very, very badly.
I swallowed, my voice feeling raw in my throat. “His name is Terran.”
Marlow’s brows furrowed instantly, confusion coloring his features while Avery remained silent, waiting for me to continue.
Bile kicked up in my stomach, forcing me to look anywhere else but at my only two friends in this world. “He’s... the cop that I operated on. That suffered from that stabbing. I—he’s… he’s been staying over at my house the past few days.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Killing me with each second that ticked by. Suffocating me. It stretched on forever, every passing second allowing the knot in my stomach to tighten.
“It started off as just physical but…” I pulled in a quick breath. “Things changed.”
The last two words hung in the air like a confession, raw and vulnerable. Exposing my own underbelly to a cruel and unforgiving reality with no other way to protect myself and in a way I never allowed for myself to feel.
