Page 42 of Their Arrangement

I stayed in the hallway. Watched the door close. Listened. She didn’t cry. Didn’t scream.

She just existed. Quiet and cornered. And I didn’t go in. Because I didn’t trust myself. Because I wasn’t sure if I’d shove her against the filing cabinet and growl in her ear to go the fuck home before she ruined what was left of us...

Or if I’d bury my face in her neck and inhale the last pieces of Camille she carried.

An hour later, I passed her desk. If you could call it a desk.

It was tucked into the corner of the admin bullpen like a punishment. No drawers. No nameplate. Nothing to mark her presence except a crooked Post-it and the ghost of dignity. She was hunched over the keyboard. Typing like her life depended on it.

Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth again. That same goddamn lip Camille used to tease her about. The one she said made Cloe look “accidentally fuckable.”

My hand twitched at my side. Her blouse pulled tight across her back as she leaned forward.

I could see the way her shoulders rounded. The way her skirt bunched slightly at the thighs. Still not looking at me. Still pretending she didn’t feel me watching. And maybe she didn’t.

But I did.

I watched her fingers move across the keys. Watched the way she paused after every sentence like she was second-guessing every word.

I remembered Camille teaching her how to write cover letters. Now she was here—typing the end of her own story one keystroke at a time.

I should’ve walked away. I didn’t. I stood there for too long. Too still. Then?—

She looked up. Just for a second. Not at me. But through me. Like some part of her knew I was there. Like the part of her that used to belong to my sister was warning the rest of her that I wasn’t safe.

I turned. Walked away. Because I wasn’t ready for her to know what I already did. That she didn’t belong here. And I was going to make sure she stayed anyway.

She didn’t see me.

But I saw her.

And I hated how much of me remembered what she used to sound like when she laughed.

She walked like she was trying to convince the floor she had a right to be there. Head up. Shoulders drawn back. Paper clutched in her hand like a shield. I watched from across the hallway, unseen behind one of the load-bearing columns,watching her move through a world built to make her disappear.

Cloe BreAnne Woods.

Camille’s ghost in borrowed heels.

Her blouse was slightly wrinkled—wrong size. Bought for a frame that was narrower than hers. Her hips shifted in her skirt like it was sewn for a mannequin and not a woman who still had softness at her waist.

The same scent as always clung to her skin—peach and vanilla and something I couldn’t name. Something dangerously close to what Camille used to wear. Close enough to make my stomach knot.

Her curls bounced when she walked. The corner of her mouth twitched when she passed someone. Like she was fighting the urge to smile—desperate to be liked, to be seen, to matter.

And I hated how much of me remembered.

The last time I saw her was the funeral. Black dress, black gloves, her chin tilted downward, her face ashen. She didn’t come to the house afterward. Didn’t speak to us. Just left. Slipped out the side like grief was a party she hadn’t been invited to.

We buried Camille. She vanished.

Until now.

Until she came crawling back with nothing in her wallet and everything on her face.

And still—somehow—I couldn’t stop watching her.

She stopped at the far end of the corridor, scanning the room numbers on the glass offices.