“I chose to stop being Diego Martinez. I buried him in that canyon with Sofia and the baby that never was. Halo is what’s left.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. The miles unspool beneath us. The mountains grow closer, their peaks sharper against the darkening sky.
“What was she like?” Cassie asks, finally. “Sofia.”
The question catches me off guard. No one asks about Sofia. They talk around her. They reference her like a footnote. But no one asks who she actually was.
“Brave,” I say. “Stubborn as hell. She was a journalist, investigating cartel corruption in Mexico City. She thought the truth mattered more than her safety.” A pause. “She was wrong.”
“She sounds like someone I would have liked.”
“You would have hated each other.” A ghost of a smile. “You’re too similar. Both convinced you can take on the world alone. Both wrong.”
“Maybe she taught you something.”
“She taught me that love is a liability. That caring about someone makes them a target.”
“And now?”
I look at her. The woman who refused to be invisible. The woman who jumped out of a five-story window because she trusted me. The woman who’s sitting here, holding my hand, asking about a ghost I’ve never let anyone else see.
“I’m not sure about anything,” I say. “People say I’m lucky. That I’ve got a guardian angel looking out for me, but I think I’m cursed, and all I know is that I can’t lose you the way I lost her.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” Her grip tightens on my hand. “I’ve watched you for days. I’ve seen what you do. How you move. How you think. You’re not the man who lost Sofia in a canyon. You’re the man who rappelled down a building to save me. You’re the man who walked into my apartment with a plan and walked out with me alive.”
“That doesn’t mean?—”
“It means you’re not cursed.” Her voice is fierce now. Certain. “It means luck isn’t the enemy. It means sometimes the universe puts people in your path for a reason. And maybe—” She stops.Takes a breath. “Maybe I’m here to be another tragedy you survive. Maybe I’m here to be something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.” She lifts my hand. Presses her lips to my knuckles. “But we’re going to find out.”
We drive in silence for a while after that. But it’s a different silence. Lighter. The ghosts are still there—Sofia, the baby, the canyon—but they’re not crushing anymore. They’re just—present. Acknowledged.
Cassie breaks the silence first.
“You didn’t kill her.”
“I wasn’t there to protect her.”
“You were doing your job. Protecting people in Syria. That’s what you do.” She squeezes my hand. “The cartels killed her. They murdered a woman and her baby because she found truth. That’s not on you.”
“I should have?—”
“Done what? Read her mind from the other side of the world? Predicted cartel hit squads?” Her voice sharpens. “You’re not God. You’re just a man who loved someone and lost her. That’s a tragedy. It’s not your fault.”
Something cracks open in my chest. Something I’ve kept sealed for six years.
And since we’re sharing …
“You’re not invisible.” The words come out rough. Raw.
“What?”
