"It's not that simple." Cal sounded exhausted. Defeated in a way I'd never heard from him before.
"It is that simple. Mateo would want?—"
"Don't." Sharp, almost harsh. "Don't tell me what Mateo would want."
Silence. I pressed my back against the wall, heart pounding so loud I was sure they could hear it.
"Cal." Liam's voice again, softer now. "You've been punishing yourself for three years. For something that wasn't your fault. You couldn't have saved him. You know that."
"I could have been faster. Could have gotten to him sooner."
"The ceiling came down. There was nothing anyone could have done."
"I was his captain." Cal's voice cracked. "I was supposed to bring him home."
My hand found my mouth, pressing hard against my lips to keep from making a sound. I'd known Cal carried guilt about Mateo's death. I'd seen it in the way he sometimes went distant when we talked about the past. But I'd never heard it like this. Never heard the raw wound underneath.
"You did everything you could," Liam said. "And you've been doing everything since. The promise, watching over Lucy, all of it. Mateo would be grateful, man. He'd be?—"
"The promise isn't the problem."
Silence.
"Then what is?"
When Cal spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper.
"I promised him, Liam. The night he died, I held him in that warehouse and I promised him I would take care of her."
The floor tilted beneath my feet.
"That's why I moved into her building. Six months ago, when she came back to town. I found out where she was living and I moved into the apartment across the hall."
No.
"That's why I've been there for everything. The texts, Evan, Gabrielle, all of it." A pause. A ragged breath. "I made a promise to a dying man, and I've spent three years trying to figure out how to keep it without?—"
The words echoed in my head, drowning out everything else. My vision blurred at the edges. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, feel it in my throat, a roar of blood and panic that swallowed the rest of the conversation whole.
"Without falling in love with her?" Liam finished.
But I didn't hear it. Didn't hear anything except the truth I'd just learned, playing on a loop, rearranging everything I thought I knew.
He moved into my building because ofa promise. Not coincidence. Not fate. A deliberate choice to keep a vow he'd made to Mateo.
Everything we'd built. Every moment I'd thought was real. It all started because Cal made a vow to a dying man and was too honorable to break it.
I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough for the conversation to shift, for Liam to say something I couldn't hear, for Cal to respond in a voice too low to make out.
Long enough for the shock to harden intosomething else. Something colder. Something that felt like armor.
I stepped into the doorway.
Cal saw me first. His face went pale, the color draining so fast I could watch it happen. His mouth opened, closed. He knew. He knew exactly what I'd heard.
"Lucy—"
"You promised him."
