When the knock finally came, he stood slowly, creaking and screaming and shivering on the inside, waiting for his left leg to get right beneath him. He thought of how familiar this was: beingon one side of the door, knowing she was on the other. He thought of how his mind was racing and his heart was pounding.
Déjà vu.
He thought of the big difference.
He thought of how—unlike that morning—this time, it was somethinghesaid.
“Griff?”
Her voice was muffled through the door, but he still tried to read something from it.Griffwas a good sign, but he couldn’t tell anything else. Whether what he’d said to Emily was something she already knew. Whether she knew more than that by now.
It didn’t matter. He was going to tell her himself; he’d already decided that.
He just needed to tell the person who most deserved—most needed—to know, first.
He opened the door.
She looked beautiful. The shirt she’d been wearing the night he first kissed her, the skin of her neck and chest showing, no adornment except for the perfume he knew she was wearing. Her hair was down, curled softly; her makeup light and lovely, her lips done with something that made them berry pink and full. When he had come to her room that first morning, she’d been so disheveled—mascara in the crescent moons beneath her eyes, her hair a wild tangle, her hotel robe haphazardly belted.
Beautiful, both ways.
“Hi,” she said, and he didn’t bother replying. He stepped back from the door, holding it open for her as she crossed the threshold. He should’ve used the time to think of exactly how to start this.
But he also probably should’ve known by now that she would: that she was calm in a crisis, efficient in her movements, good at asking good questions and giving necessary information.
She went straight to the terrible couch and sat. It seemed the perfect size for her. She looked up at him and said, “Michael and Emily left the open house.”
He stood, still near the door, his hands shoved in his pockets. He nodded.
“Rosie’s handling it,” she added. “She said she’d distract everyone for as long as she could.”
Another nod. He had been distantly aware of Rosie standing there, when he’d gone to Emily, but only distantly. He did not want to see anyone else when he did it, for fear of losing his nerve. Not Michael, not Fitz or Paula, not even Layla. Especially not Layla, maybe.
He kept his gaze tight. At one point, making his way across what felt like an endless room, he’d thought:I’m moving like a monster. I’m moving like I’m stalking prey.
“Can you tell me what you said to her?”
It was a few seconds before he could make himself move. He did not go to the bed, because sitting on that bed, right now, in Layla’s presence, when he was about to tell her this, felt sacrilegious. Like watching a church burn.
So he went to the weird little desk. Took off his hat, tossed it on top of the hotel-branded notepad. Pulled out the chair, turned it toward her. Then he sat, comforted somewhat by the hard, unforgiving surface beneath him. An upholding surface, if not a comfortable one.
He looked straight at her.
“I told her that she needed to ask Michael about Sara Beth.”
She didn’t speak right away, but he could see her mind working. Deciding what to say, what to ask next, like a good doctor does. With difficult patients, patients with multiple injuries—patients like him—you sometimes had to be strategic.
“That’s your friend from high school,” Layla said. “Who also died in the fire?”
He tipped his head down. Ayes.
“Emily knew that,” she said. “She knew there had been a fire, and that someone close to you both died.”
“She was Michael’s girlfriend,” Griffin said abruptly, cracking open the gates. “Since ninth grade, his girlfriend. It’s not really the right word. He was going to propose to her. They would’ve—” He broke off, back then and right now colliding in his mind, two unfulfilled futures for Michael. Him involved in both.
“They would’ve gotten married,” he finally said. “They definitely would have gotten married.”
“Why didn’t Michael tell her?”
