Chapter 5 The Weight of Knowing

Cael POV

Rowe knows.

Not everything. But enough. The look on his face when he said it, you knew about your family, didn't you, wasn't a guess. It was a door swinging open that I had spent three years nailing shut, and he found the hinge on day three.

I do the only thing I can do.

I lie.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I say. My voice comes out flat and steady and completely convincing, which is the one good thing my life has given me. I have had so much practice at this that the lies come out cleaner than the truth.

Rowe stares at me. He doesn't believe me. I can see that. But he also can't prove anything, and we both know it, so after a long moment, he steps back and lets me pass.

I walk to my room. I close the door. I sit on the floor with my back against the bed, and I press both hands flat against the carpet, and I breathe.

That was too close.

I don't come out for dinner. I tell my mom through the door that I have a headache. She asks twice if I'm okay. I say yes both times. She leaves a plate outside the door. I don't eat it.

I sit at the small desk, and I open my notebook, not the writing one, the planning one, and I update the numbers.

Money saved: enough. Documents: almost ready. Contact: still reachable. Days remaining before Rowe's death: 83.

I write that last number, and then I stare at it.

Eighty-three days. Twelve weeks. I could be gone in two. I have everything I need. I could leave before this gets worse, before Silas uses me for something I can't undo, before Rowe pulls one more thread and unravels the only protection I have left, which is that nobody knows what I can do.

Leaving is the smart choice. The safe choice. The choice I have made every single time before this.

I close the notebook.

I open it again.

I write one question at the bottom of the page and then immediately want to cross it out, but don't.

What if I could stop it?

I'm so deep in my own head that the knock on my door makes me slam the notebook shut. "Yeah."

"It's me."

Rowe.

I don't answer for a second. Then: "Door's unlocked."

He comes in and doesn't sit. He stands near the door with his arms crossed, and I've already noticed that's how he stands when he's thinking, not aggressive, just contained, like he's keeping himself from moving until he's decided something.

"I'm not going to push you," he says. "About earlier."

I look at him carefully. "Okay."

"But I pulled your file." He says it straight, no apology. "Your dad, your mom, your brother. Three years ago. You were the only one who wasn't in the car."

My chest goes very still. "You pulled my file."

"Yes."

"That's not your information to pull."

"I know." He doesn't look sorry. "You looked at me at that dinner table like you were watching me die. I wanted to understand why."

The room feels smaller than it did a minute ago. I stand up because I need to not be sitting while he's standing, need to not feel like I'm already at a disadvantage. "What do you want, Rowe?"

"I want to know if you're okay."

That is so far from what I expected him to say that for a full second, I don't process it. I wait for the rest of it: the condition, the angle, the thing he wants in return. There isn't one. He just stands there looking at me like the question is actually the whole sentence.

And that simple, unguarded question does more damage than anything else he could have said.

"I'm fine," I tell him.

"You're not."

"I'm fine, Rowe."

He looks at me for a long moment. Then he nods once, like he's filing that response away for later. He turns to go.

"Why do you care?" I ask. I don't mean to. It comes out before I can stop it, and it comes out too honest, too tired, too genuine, the voice of someone who has been carrying something alone for so long that basic human concern feels suspicious.

He stops. Doesn't turn around right away. When he does, his face is doing something different, something younger than his usual expression, something that costs him to show.

"Because nobody asked me that question either," he says quietly. "After my mom died. Nobody asked if I was okay. They asked if I needed anything. They brought food. They said all the right things." He pauses. "But nobody just asked if I was okay."

The silence between us is the loudest thing in the room.

I don't say anything. I can't. Because if I open my mouth right now, the wrong thing will come out, and I cannot afford to say the wrong things with Rowe Daltry. Not with his number sitting at eighty-three. Not when my exit plan is the only thing keeping me from doing something I'll spend the rest of my life paying for.

He leaves.

I sit back down on the floor. I pick up my pen.

I cross out the exit timeline.

Then I write it again.

Then I cross it out again.

I'm still sitting there an hour later when my phone lights up. The unknown number. Silas.

Tomorrow. My office. 7 am. Come alone and don't be late. We have a lot to discuss about your future here.

I read it three times.

Then a second message arrives.

And Cael, I know you've been looking at Rowe. I know what you saw. Don't make the mistake of thinking that information belongs to you.

I put the phone face down on the floor.

My hands are shaking, but my mind is suddenly very, very quiet the way it goes quiet when something shifts from complicated to dangerous, and emotion stops being useful.

Silas knows the number above Rowe's head.

Which means Silas already knows how Rowe dies.

Which means this was never a remarriage.

I pick up my planning notebook. I turn to a clean page.

I don't write an exit plan this time.

I write a single name at the top of the page.

Rowe.

Eighty-three days. And someone in this house is already counting down.