54. Chapter 54
I don’t find out by accident.
I found out because I pay very close attention to everything Sadie does whether she realizes it or not.
Not that she would tell me, she’s guarded in a way she wasn’t before. Like she’s learned that silence can be armor if you wear it long enough. But people talk and patterns shift. A bartender leaves with someone she never leaves with and a man lingers too long near her space.
I don’t need names, I only need confirmation.
That takes me less than a day.
I recognize Evan as one of the bar’s regular orbiters. Broad enough to be useful, but unremarkable enough to think he’s entitled to proximity. The kind of man who makes mistakes because he thinks the world works as it should.
I sit in my car two blocks away and watch him leave the bus. He hadn’t stayed long, so I can assume they didn’t actually fuck. But he’s got that look about him that says he got enough and thinks that maybe there’s more if he waits it out.
It’s not rage I feel when I slip from the car. Rage would be sloppy and inefficient. He crossed a boundary without knowing it existed, and although it doesn’t absolve him, it does give him some leverage in how this will end.
It’s just… the world doesn’t stop being dangerous just because someone didn’t read the signs.
I don’t confront him immediately, but stay a few paces behind.
Quiet as I let the rhythm of the night guide us both along.
He leaves the bar and walks three blocks before cutting through a side street, unlocking a door that sticks in the frame.
It’s not his home, so I’m assuming there’s too much heat there.
So, I wait. I’ve got all the time in the world, because I’m not the one on a timer with invertibility.
When he comes back out, it’s hours past midnight. The street is empty when I step into his path. He startles at my abrupt arrival, squaring his shoulders like that might matter.
“Do I know you?” He asks.
“No, but you know her.”
Confusion flickers across his face as he stares at me, then recognition.
“Look, man, if this is about—”
“It is,” I confirm.
He shifts his weight defensively, posturing just a bit. I let him finish talking because people always reveal themselves if you give them enough rope.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he scoffs. “She said yes.”
“Do you think I really give a shit about that?”
He scoffs. “You her boyfriend or something?”
Something like that.
“Did you touch her?”
He doesn’t say a damn word, and that’s answer enough.
“That’s what I thought.” I whisper and step forward.
I wash my hands.
Not because I feel dirty, but because its habit. I scrub carefully, until the water runs clean and my pulse settles back into its normal cadence.
The world is quiet again though, and gloriously balanced.
I didn’t linger to gawk at what I did to Evan. I don’t bother to admire the outcome. This wasn’t about satisfaction—though there was spades of it—it was more about correction.
An obstacle to be removed.
I drive away before the city has time to notice the absence and by the time the news breaks its days later. The story already being shaped by people who need simple explanations. Wrong place at the wrong time. Bad luck they call it.
Violence without context.
I sit in my apartment, lights low, listening to the broadcast on the news without really watching it. I don’t need the visuals to confirm what I know was done.
She tried to replace me.
I mean, I knew she would do that. I had called it, but it still fucking hurts. Sure, she didn’t sleep with him but she did attempt to forget me. Which has to count for something. I hope.
She might not know yet what has happened to her little slip up, but I’m sure she will soon. At least then she’ll understand that I don’t share and certainly don’t fucking compete.
And I don’t lose what’s mine because someone else failed to understand the rules.
Sadie will come back, I repeat to myself.
And when she does, the world will already be safer for her. Whether she realizes it or not.