Page 62 of What You left in Me

“The screenshots with Sunshine.”

He stills. He glances down at the screen. I watch every millimeter of it: the way his brows knit, the quick drag of his bottom lip against his teeth, the small flinch in his jaw like he just bit something too cold.

The blue and gray bubbles pop up, familiar and wrong. His thumb stutters, then moves faster, then slows, like he’s trying to outrun the words. Surprise cracks across his face, almost perfectly timed.The bastard.He actually looks surprised. For a stupid second, that hurts more than if he’d smirked.

He keeps reading. His eyes do this rapid-blink thing he does when a board member asks a question that wasn’t on the agenda. His mouth opens, closes. He swallows, hard enough I hear it in the quiet.

“Ari…”

“Don’t,” I say, because if he starts with that voice, the one that always makes me sit and drink water and breathe, I will go under. “Don’t start with soft.”

He drags his gaze up from the screen and fixes it on me, steady, almost calm. It’s the look he wears when something messy happens onstage and he has to soothe a room with his eyebrows. “I don’t know who that is,” he says. Steady and gentle. “Someone’s messing with me. With us. I swear to you. These are screenshots… they’re hardly believable…”

I laugh, and it slices my throat on the way out. “‘Room 314 again?’ ‘Still thinking about the elevator’? ‘Delete this’?” I tip my head toward the porte-cochère, where the security lights halo the curve of the drive. “She texted you while you were pumping gas. Your good-boy halo was shining so hard you didn’t even look down.”

“Ariane,” he says, palms open, inching around the table like he’s approaching a wounded animal. “Listen to me.”

“I have been listening to you,” I say, and my voice goes high before I yank it back. I plant it low. Even. “Flights, donors, the senator who loves a photo with a hand on your shoulder. You talk, I listen. I’m listening now. It sounds like lies.”

“It’s not.” The soft cracks at the edges; something raw shows. His eyes are bright. “I don’t know this person. I didn’t write those. That name…Sunshine… that isn’t…”

“Me?” I supply. “No. It isn’t.”

He flinches. “I mean it isn’t anyone. I would never…”

“You would never get caught,” I say. “That’s what you mean.”

“I would never do this to you.” He stops a few feet away, hands still visible, the posture of a man who wants to touch butknows better. “I know how this looks. But I need you to trust me.”

“Trust what?” I point at the phone. “That this is a glitch? A ghost? It’s not a rumor on a bathroom wall, Julian. It’s a map. It shows how you move when you think no one’s watching.”

He looks down at the screen again like it might have changed in the last two seconds. He flips once more, slower. I see the exact line hit his eyes.You looked incredible in red. Still thinking about the elevator.His throat works. He goes a little gray around the mouth.

“It’s not mine. You can check my phone…” he says. Quieter. It’s almost like he’s trying to convince himself.

“Then whose hand is that holding it?” I ask.

“People fake this. All the time,” he says, fast now, chasing the only rope within reach. “There are apps. You can doctor entire threads. Metadata, time stamps… there are forums. I’ve seen articles… anyone could have…”

“Enough with the excuses, Julian!” I cut in, and the steadiness in my voice startles me. “They’re your messages. Your screenshots. She texted you and asked for a key under your name.”

He swallows. “Christ.” His eyes squeeze shut for a beat, then open, frantic and pleading. “I’ll call. Right now. On speaker. I’ll ask who she is. You’ll hear it.”

“And if she answers like she knows you by the sound you make when you’re lying?” My smile feels like it could break my face. “What then?”

“If she answers like she knows me, I will stay and fix what I broke,” he says, every word chosen, heavy. “If she doesn’t, we figure out who did this to us. Together. Please, don’t… don’t set the house on fire over a thread you saw for two minutes.”

“You think I’m setting something on fire.” I shake my head. The chandelier throws light across the marble; the motor court beyond the windows glows like a stage set for a different family. “It feels like you did, and I’m just finally smelling the smoke.”

He flinches like I threw something, and it hit. He looks around the room as if the house could help him, as if the portraits might vouch. The softness returns, weaponized. “Tell me what to do.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am.” His voice fractures; he pulls it together. “Someone is doing this to us.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe you wrote to Sunshine about an elevator while I held my mother upright in one.” The memory spikes; I bite it back. “You want me to choose you. I can’t even I know you right now. Who are you? Why would you do this to me—to us?”

He scrubs a hand over his face, wrecking his neat hair. He looks young for a second and lost. “I love you.”