I force myself upright, stretching joints stiff from tension rather than rest. Sunrise comes in twenty minutes. We said we’d leave then. The sooner we go, the better—at least that’s what Ikeep telling myself. I grab my bag from the corner and check the contents out of habit: laptop, drives, tools, and a few pieces of equipment I hope I won’t need, but probably will. Everything is ready—except me. I’m not sure I ever could be. Not for this. Not for what we might find.
The hallway is too quiet when I step out, and for a moment, an irrational thought slices through me.Maybe Hazel left in the night.Maybe she realized I’m not someone anyone should trust and got out while she could. But when I step into the kitchen, she’s standing by the counter.Of course she is. Her arms are folded, her hair pulled into a messy tie barely holding, and she looks exhausted in a way that settles heavily in my chest. But she also looks grounded. Collected. Like while I spiraled, she somehow stayed steady.
She lifts her eyes to me, and it’s ridiculous how much that tiny motion hits. “Morning,” she says, her voice neutral, not giving anything away. It’s not cold or warm—just careful. Even. I wish she’d snap at me instead. Anger I can handle, but this calm distance twists something deep inside my soul. Is this somehow my fault that her sunshine has set, and she almost seems to be a rain cloud today? I did this to her. I somehow took away the light. I’m beginning to see I was right—I’m bad for her, and I need to accept that.
“Morning,” I manage, reaching for the thermos on the counter. The words feel too thin for all the things I should say. She nods toward the door, and the motion is restrained in a way that makes my throat tighten.Why am I so worried about what she thinks? Why am I concerning myself with all of this?
“Ready?” she asks.
“Almost,” I answer, though the truth is, I’m not ready at all. I ask if she slept, and she tells me, “A little,” which is better than I expected. I want to ask more questions—if she’s still upset, ifshe’s scared, if she thinks I’m pushing her away on purpose—but I don’t. I don’t know how without making everything worse.
She mentions leaving Sam a note before we go, and I thank her, the words coming out quieter than I intend. Something flickers between us, a muted echo of last night’s closeness that neither of us reaches for. I sling my bag over my shoulder and jerk my chin toward the door. “Come on. We should beat traffic.” It’s a stupid phrase, an excuse we both hear for what it is—a way to move forward without actually dealing with anything.
Outside, the air is crisp, fog drifting across the street in slow curls. Hazel pulls her jacket tighter around herself. I want to offer mine, but the words die before they reach my mouth. I walk a few steps ahead, less because I want space and more because I don’t trust myself not to say something raw and irreversible. She follows silently, and the distance feels wrong in a way I can’t name.
The car is freezing when we get inside. Hazel buckles in, folding in on herself just slightly, like she’s bracing for impact. The silence between us feels almost physical—heavy in a way that makes my grip tighten on the steering wheel. I sit there for a moment, letting the low hum of the heater fill the car, then force myself to speak.
“Hazel,” I say, my voice low, hesitant in a way I hate.
She turns her head toward me, her eyes sharp with attention, but not unkind. She’s waiting—always waiting—giving me more patience than I deserve.
“I didn’t pull away last night because of you,” I say, the confession scraping out of me, rough at the edges.
Her expression shifts. It’s small, but enough I feel it. “Then why did you?” she asks. There’s no accusation in her tone, just quiet interest.
“I needed to,” I admitted, staring straight ahead at the fogged windshield, because looking at her might make mespill everything. “And because if I didn’t, I was going to say something I wasn’t supposed to say.”
She exhales slowly, her breath misting against the window beside her. When she speaks, her voice softens—enough to make something inside me lean toward her despite my best intentions. “You keep acting like the truth is a loaded gun I can’t hold.”
“It is,” I whisper, unable to stop the words.
Hazel doesn’t argue. She doesn’t push. She just looks forward, letting the car settle into a thick silence again as the fog swirls around us. After a long moment, she nods almost imperceptibly.
“Let’s go find some answers,” she says.
She doesn’t say she forgives me. She doesn’t say she understands. But she doesn’t walk away, either. And for now, that’s enough to keep me moving. I wish I was going on this drive alone, but she’s in this now.
I shift the car into drive as the first streaks of gold stretch across the horizon. The sun rises behind us as we pull onto the road, painting the world in colors that don’t match the weight in my chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ETERNAL SUNSHINE
HAZEL
The tension in the car is enough to snap in half. Even with the heater blowing warm air across my legs and the sunrise trying its best to spill some kind of hope across the sky, everything inside the vehicle is tight—my shoulders, his jaw, the air between us. I can practically see Zack sinking into himself, folding smaller and smaller with every mile we put between us and his apartment. So. I do what I usually do when silence threatens to swallow me whole: I talk. I point out useless details on the road, marvel dramatically over the color of the sky, though it looks like the inside of a washed-out seashell, and joke about how Zack turns corners like he’s auditioning for a car chase scene. The more he retreats, the brighter I force myself to become. Sunshine, sparkles, glitter, whatever keeps his guilt from crushing us.
He doesn’t say much in return. His grip on the wheel is tight enough his knuckles have gone pale, and he keeps working hisjaw the way people do when they’re trying not to say something they’ll regret. He watches the road with an intensity that borders on painful, and although he glances at me occasionally, each look feels like it’s dipped in some emotion he’s trying very hard not to show. I don’t know if my babbling helps or makes him feel worse, but I keep going. My effervescence is its own sort of shield, but I can feel the guilt radiating off him like heat from an engine, and I can’t stand the idea of being the reason he folds further into himself.
When he finally clears his throat, the sound slices through the humming silence. I turn toward him, ready for a half-hearted deflection or a comment about the GPS, but instead his voice comes out quieter than usual. “I talked to Lincoln last night.”
The name flickers through my memory. He’s been mentioned once or twice in passing as one of his friends who “helps with things,” whatever vague hacker-coded statement that is. I try to remember anything else Zack told me about him, but there’s nothing. Lincoln is just a name to me. No face, no personality, no context. So, I sit up a little straighter, curiosity pricking beneath my ribs. “Okay…and who is Lincoln again? Your tech guy?”
A muscle in Zack’s cheek twitches. “He’s the one I call when I need deeper searches. He’s…good at what he does.”
The way he says it, his voice is careful, restrained, makes me think “good” is an understatement. But I make the executive decision to let it go for now. “What did he find?”
There’s another pause, and for a moment I think he’s going to shut down again, slide behind that wall he built last night and leave me staring at the surface of it. But then he exhales, long and slow, and something like defeat settles across his features. “I had him look more into Detective Alexandra. Beyond the usual department files.”
