Just Declan.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then Tiny shoved past his leg like he’d been launched from a cannon.
The dog hit me in the thighs before I got fully inside.
“Oof. Hi. Yeah, I’m here.” I grabbed the doorframe and tried not to get taken out by a hundred and whatever pounds of emotionally unstable mastiff. “Buddy, we’ve talked about my knees. I need those professionally.”
Tiny made a horrible thrilled noise and pushed his head under my hand so hard my wrist bent.
Declan shut the door behind me and locked it.
The click sounded too loud.
I looked past him into the house. Living room lamp on. Kitchen dim. A blanket folded over the back of the couch. One of Olivia’s decorative bowls on the entry table, empty except for a single key I didn’t recognize. It all looked normal in the way places look normal after something terrible happens, which somehow makes it worse.
“Where’s Olivia?” I asked.
Declan’s hand stayed on the lock for a second before he turned.
“She went to stay with Rachel.”
My stomach dipped.
Rachel.
Not just Olivia’s friend. Roman’s Rachel. Roman’s ex-wife. The one he almost never talked about unless he’d had two drinks and someone else brought up divorce first. The world tightened in that uncomfortable way it did when separate parts of my life started touching.
“Rachel,” I said.
Declan’s gaze moved over my face. “Yeah.”
“As in Roman’s ex-wife Rachel?”
He nodded once. “Olivia and Rachel stayed friends after the divorce. You knew that?”
“I knew they were connected. I didn’t know she’d be the place Olivia went tonight.”
Tiny bumped his head under my palm again, demanding service despite the collapse of civilization. I scratched behind his ear automatically.
Declan’s expression pulled with fatigue. “I didn’t plan it.”
“I know.” I swallowed. “I know you didn’t.”
It still changed the shape of the room in my head. Roman already knew. Not because I’d been brave enough to say every word out loud, but because Roman wasn’t stupid and I was terrible at hiding from people who actually paid attention. He knew enough. Maybe all of it. And Roman would take a secret to the grave if it was mine to keep.
That wasn’t the part that scared me.
The part that scared me was Rachel knowing Olivia’s pain. Olivia needing to talk. Rachel maybe piecing together the man Olivia wouldn’t be given a name for. Roman sitting in the middle of it without ever betraying me, but carrying one more impossible thing on that permanently annoyed face of his.
Secrets didn’t only hurt when people exposed them.
Sometimes they hurt because decent people had to hold them.
Declan watched me process that.
“She left this afternoon,” he said.
