Page 105 of What You left in Me

“If you want to meet tomorrow, I can—”

“I’ll look,” I say, voice thin. “Goodnight, Julian.”

“Ariane…”

“Goodnight.”

I hang up before he can say my name again.

For a minute I just sit there, the phone a small hot moon in my hand, the room washed the color of sleepless. The house is quiet in that way it gets at night—like it’s holding its breath to hear who you become. I open the first screenshot. It’s clinical, almost boring. The kind of boring that changes your life.

He might be telling the truth.

The thought slices in, no drama, just the cut. If Julian’s telling the truth, then the story I used to justify everything—walking away from him, falling into Finn, letting myself be tied and taken and ruined—wasn’t true.

I didn’t fall because I was pushed. I jumped.

“Oh, God,” I say to the ceiling, because sometimes God is just drywall. My face is hot and my hands are cold and I can feel my heart trying to organize a riot.

I scroll. The report is tidy and smug. Someone with energy and horror movies in their soul made this. It shows exactly how the messages could've been injected. How the timing didn’t line up. How the network pings went missing for the most incriminating texts. It’s convincing. It makes sense.

And it sounds exactly like something Finn would do.

I press the heel of my hand into my chest as if I can hold the thought inside, pin it like a moth.He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.Except he absolutely would. He’s the man who doesn’t go around obstacles when he can dismantle them, sell the parts, and build himself a throne.

I think again to the summer when I was twenty, watching Finn lean against a silver Mustang he’d bought with money he conjured from the internet and sheer willpower. Richard had been half impressed and half furious.Once Finn wants something, he gets it. No matter what.

I look at the anklet under my pajama hem like it might have advice. It keeps its own counsel, an elegant little secret hugging my ankle bone. It says nothing and it says everything:He wanted to know where you are. Always.

“Goddammit,” I whisper into the dark. My voice sounds small and angry and a little bit turned on, which is the most humiliating thing I have ever admitted even to myself. I want to hate him. I want to love him. I am stuck in the middle of nowhere. I walk towards his door and open the door. No knocking or calling out his name. I’ve had enough.

He’s there, framed in lamplight, shirt rumpled, hair a mess that looks like a fight you want to join. He smells like soap and something mean. Those eyes, dark and silvered, find me and pin me to the threshold.

“Ariane.” His voice runs over my name like a palm over skin. “Couldn’t sleep?”

I hold the phone out because if I don’t hold it, I will grab his shirt and do something I can’t blame on insomnia. “Julian sent me this.”

He doesn’t look at it immediately. He looks at me. Then he takes the phone, thumb brushing my fingers, and some switch I didn’t consent to installing flips on.

I step back into the hall without meaning to, because everything inside me just leaned toward him and I need to remind myself which way forward is.

“Come in,” he says, not a question. He pivots, and I have to brush his chest to slide past. My body notices.

His room is all edges and expensive quiet. He flicks through the file with a patient thumb. His face doesn’t change. It rarely does. He’s the kind of man who can be furious and look bored. Then, he locks the phone and sets it on the desk like it’s a coaster.

“That’s thorough,” he says.

“That’s all you’re going to say?” My voice does a stupid thing where it tries to be steady and nearly manages it. “He says someone faked the screenshots I got sent. That the messages never existed.”

“Okay,” he says.

I blink. “Okay? So, you’re just…What? Admitting it?”

He tilts his head, eyes on mine, steady, infuriating. “He didn’t prove anything aboutwhodid it. He proved it could be done. We both know it can be done. It’s really not that hard, you know?”

“We both knowyoucan do it,” I say, and the words taste like bitter in my mouth. “Did you?”

He doesn’t answer like a normal person. Of course he doesn’t. He steps into my space, slow, like he’s stalking a nervous animal that keeps walking willingly into his hands. He touches my chin with two fingers, tipping my face up. I should swat him away. I don’t.