Thornwick's POV
I haven't slept.
Not because of the files. Not because of the message someone typed onto my open laptop. Not even because I spent twenty minutes replaying that phone call, trying to figure out what Elodie knew and when she knew it.
I haven't slept because of three words.
You shouldn't be.
I said them in the back of a car to a woman who was trying not to cry, and then I held her hand in the dark, and the whole ride home I kept thinking—when did this stop being simple? When did Elodie Vale stop being a name on a contract and start being someone I think about at one in the morning?
I get up at half past two. Can't lie there anymore.
The apartment is quiet. I'm heading to the kitchen when I see the library light on.
She's on the floor.
Not collapsed—just sitting, back against the couch, knees pulled up, surrounded by a spread of photographs. Old ones. Physical prints, the kind nobody makes anymore. She doesn't hear me come in.
I watch her pick up one photo, study it, then set it down carefully. Like it's fragile. Like she's afraid of it.
Then I see her shoulders shake.
I should leave. This is private. This is exactly the kind of moment a man in a business arrangement has no right to interrupt.
I sit down beside her instead. Close enough that she knows I'm there.
She doesn't jump. She just wipes her face fast with the back of her hand, the way people do when they've decided crying is something to be ashamed of.
"Sorry," she says. "I didn't think you'd be up."
"What are these?"
She hesitates. Then holds one out.
It's a family photo. A big one—some holiday, a long table, everyone dressed up and laughing. Her parents are in the center. Calista is on her father's right, face bright, taking up the frame the way she takes up every room.
And at the very edge of the photo, half-cut-off, barely in the shot at all—Elodie. Looking at something outside the frame. Out of focus. Like the camera forgot she was there.
She hands me another one. And another. Every single photo is the same. Calista centered. Elodie at the edge, or blocked, or slightly blurred, or simply missing.
"I went through every family album tonight," she says. Her voice is steady but her hands aren't. "Every Christmas. Every birthday. Every vacation." She picks up the first photo again. "I don't even exist in my own family history."
I don't say it's not true. I've seen enough to know it is.
I don't say it'll get better. I have no idea if it will.
What I say is: "You exist here. I see you."
She turns to look at me.
And I realize—too late—how close we are. Close enough that I can see exactly when her breath changes. Close enough that I stop thinking about the files on my laptop, the mystery texts, all of it just falls away.
Her eyes drop to my mouth for one half-second.
I lean forward.
She leans back.
Not away—just barely. Just enough.
"Don't," she says. Quietly. Not angry. Almost like a warning to herself as much as me.
I pull back. Clear my throat. Look at the photos instead of her face.
"Right," I say.
"Right," she echoes.
Neither of us moves for a long moment. Then she starts collecting the photos, and I help her without being asked, and we don't speak again, and when she goes to her room and closes the door I stand in the library for a long time staring at nothing.
I'm in serious trouble.
The business dinner is two nights later. Twenty people, a private room, a deal I need to close with a tech firm whose CEO finds everything funny and everyone charming.
Elodie comes because Marlowe suggested it. "Brings warmth to the room," Marlowe said. She wasn't wrong.
I watch Elodie work a table the way she works everything—quietly, precisely. She asks the right questions. She remembers what people said ten minutes ago and builds on it. The CEO's wife talks to her for forty minutes straight and leaves looking like she's made a new friend.
I should be focused on the deal.
Instead I notice when a man across the table leans toward her. One of our associate directors—Fenn. Young, smooth, the kind of man who smiles like a habit.
He says something close to her ear. She gives him the polite smile. The one I know now means she's not actually amused. I know that smile.
He says something else. His hand lands on the back of her chair.
I'm on my feet before I know I've decided to move.
I cross the room in six steps, put my hand on Elodie's shoulder—warm, deliberate, unmistakable—and look at Fenn with the exact expression I use when someone has just made a very costly mistake.
"My wife," I say. Two words. No room for interpretation.
Fenn moves his hand. Finds somewhere else to be.
I feel Elodie go very still under my palm.
She waits until we're in the elevator to say it.
"You can't be jealous." She's looking straight ahead. "I'm a placeholder, remember? Your words."
"I know what I said."
"Then act like it."
"Can't I?"
She turns. Stares at me.
"Can't I be jealous?" I say it again, slower. Like the words are new to me too. Because they are. "Is that actually a rule?"
She opens her mouth. Closes it. The elevator doors open and she walks out fast, and I follow, and neither of us speaks again until she reaches her door.
"Thornwick." She doesn't turn around.
"Yes."
"Don't make this harder than it already is."
She goes inside. The door clicks shut.
I stand in the hallway and realize—fully, clearly, with no room left to argue with myself—that I am falling for my wife. The one I wasn't supposed to notice. The one nobody ever looked at.
The one hiding something about my fiancee's accident that I still don't understand.
I go to my study. Open my laptop. Pull up the hospital security system login—the one I've had since Calista was admitted.
The message on my laptop three days ago said to check Room 14B footage before it disappeared. I was too shaken to act on it. I'm acting now.
The footage loads.
I lean forward.
And every feeling from the last two weeks—the coffee cups, the hand in mine, the almost-kiss, the jealousy, all of it—drains out of me completely.
Because there, on the screen, standing outside Calista's hospital room at 11:47 PM the night she fell—
Is Elodie.
Standing completely still. Watching the door.
Then she looks directly at the security camera.
And she reaches up—and covers the lens.