Ch. 13: The Price of Silence

She had promised herself she would not come back to this place. She had promised a lot of things.

Money could buy a great many things, he had learned, but never the one thing that was wanted most. "I'm not asking you to forgive me," Nina said. "I'm asking you to listen."

The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. Nina crossed the room slowly, aware of every step, of the way he was watching without seeming to.

"You shouldn't have come," he said, and the words landed softer than they were meant to. She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more.

Money could buy a great many things, he had learned, but never the one thing that was wanted most. "You shouldn't have come," he said, and the words landed softer than they were meant to.

Outside, the world went on as if nothing had shifted. Inside, everything had.

There was a history between them that neither would name, written in the things they did not do. For a heartbeat the careful distance between them thinned to nothing at all. "You shouldn't have come," he said, and the words landed softer than they were meant to.

The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. "You shouldn't have come," he said, and the words landed softer than they were meant to.

She did not sleep that night. There was too much to lose, and far too much to want.