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“Old work, mostly. Notes on plays. Pictures of us. A flash drive, with notes on old cases.”

“That’s not much.”

“It’s more than you have now.”

He holds strong.

So I offer a little more. I scribble another code on his arm. “The routing number that pays me. You can find a lot with that.”

He looks down at his hand, casually, like he’s not memorizing the digits. “You’ll need to play my girlfriend until the dinner. It’s the only way to justify your invite.”

“That we got back together?”

He nods.

“No one knows what really happened?” I ask.

“You do,” he says. He doesn’t linger on the betrayal. Only the facts. “My boss knows what he saw in that video.”

“So I’ll wear a long dress.” I run my fingers over the tattoo on my left thigh, over my jeans. “He doesn’t know you had an affair with Nike. Only that someone at Olympus got close enough to steal your info.”

He nods. More or less.

Hmm. He kept that secret. From his own team. “Does anyone else know our history?” I ask.

“Only the two of us.”

“And Elena,” I add.

“She’s real?” he asks, surprise in his voice. He assumed everything I told him was fake. But it wasn’t. Most of it was true. It was just in the form of stories from plays or books I read. Ideas I had for scenes. It’s amazing how much darkness people want to see if they believe it’s fiction.

“Who do you think came to my birthday dinner?” I ask.

“What does she really do?” he asks. Then immediately puts it together. “She works with you?”

“She’s my best friend.” Have I said too much? Elena’s well being is the one thing I won’t risk.

“And you let me meet her?”

“I trusted you.”

“Now?” he asks, and I can’t tell if it’s as a colleague or old lover.

So I answer as both. “You did throw me in jail. Are you going to keep making me bring that up?”

He shrugs. “You love bringing it up. It’s your own moral highground.”

“You know I don’t care about moral high ground.”

“Then why do you keep bringing it up?” he asks.

My lips curl into a smile. He does know me. Still.

And I know him. I look him in the eyes. I stay firm. “You haven’t given me a reason to trust you yet.”

“You’re not in handcuffs.”

That’s a good point, but it’s not enough. “You can do better than that.”