Chapter Thirteen
SAGE
The Next Day
The next day I spend smiling like an idiot.
Not constantly.
That would be ridiculous.
Just at random.
I’ll be halfway through answering an email or making coffee in the break room at Unsilenced when the memory catches me completely off guard.
Ghost standing in my doorway, looking like saying goodnight had somehow become the most complicated thing in his life.
The way he’d completely missed my attempt to kiss him, buffered for what felt like forever, then somehow I managed to walk straight into his shoulder trying to recover.
I smile all over again.
At the time, I’d wanted the floor to open up and swallow both of us whole.
Now, I honestly can’t imagine it happening any other way.
It was awkward. Painfully awkward. It was also so unmistakably us that every time I think about it, something warm settles low in my chest.
The second kiss helps too. Quite a lot, actually.
More than once I catch myself touching my lips without thinking, remembering the way he’d looked at me before he’d kissed me again.
It was as if somewhere between the sofa and my front door he’d stopped trying to convince himself to stay away. That thought follows me all day.
Apparently so does the smile.
By lunchtime, Carla narrows her eyes at me from across the conference table before setting her coffee down with exaggerated suspicion. “Okay,” she says. “Who is he?”
“What?”
“Or she. I’m not judging.”
A couple of people laugh.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit,” Ben says from the other end of the table. “You’ve smiled at your laptop three times in the last ten minutes.”
I fold my arms across my chest in defiance. “I was reading an email.”
“You were reading next month’s funding forecast.” Carla points at me with her pen. “Whatever you’re on…” she grins, “… I need some.”
Everyone laughs, and I laugh along with them, shaking my head while heat creeps into my cheeks.
If they only knew.
Whatever this thing is that’s finally happening between Ghost and me, whatever shifted between us last night, I know one thing with absolute certainty…
I’m hanging onto it with both hands.
The only downside is that I don’t actually get to see him.
We’d planned to catch up after work, but a problem at the mine pulled him back to the clubhouse before lunch, and I got stuck at Unsilenced until after eight, dealing with a grant application that refused to cooperate.
So, we text instead. Ghost sends messages the same way he talks—short and efficient. Somehow capable of saying more in a few words than most people manage in paragraphs.
Toothpick: Eat lunch.
I look down at the yogurt still sitting untouched beside my keyboard and wonder if he has installed cameras in my office. I wouldn’t put it past the asshole.
Me: Are you tracking my eating habits now?
Three little dots appear almost immediately.
Toothpick: Yes.
I stare at the screen, and then laugh out loud in the middle of the office.
An hour later, my phone buzzes again.
Toothpick: Stretch.
I roll my eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t fall out.
Me: Bossy.
His reply comes before I’ve even put my phone back down.
Toothpick: You’re welcome.
I don’t stretch.
Five minutes later, my lower back starts complaining, and I groan, hating that the bastard was right, so begrudgingly, I stretch.
And I absolutely refuse to tell him he was right.
By mid-afternoon, I pick up my cell and send off another text.
Me: Still alive?
The reply takes longer this time. I picture him buried beneath monitors somewhere in the clubhouse, toothpick in his mouth while six different screens compete for his attention.
Toothpick: Debatable.
The corner of my mouth lifts.
Me: Need rescuing?
The little typing dots appear, then disappear, then they come back again.
Toothpick: Bring beef jerky.
I laugh quietly to myself.
Me: The terrible one?
Toothpick: Apparently.
Me: I’m saving you from yourself. I’ll drop by tomorrow with your stupid ass jerky.
Toothpick: See you then.
I smirk. “Man of few words,” I mumble to myself, then get on with the rest of the day, and by the time I finally crawl into bed, my phone is sitting beside me on the nightstand. One last message buzzes through just after ten thirty.
Toothpick: You make it home okay?
Something inside me softens. Nobody has ever made checking that I’d made it home feel like a love language before.
Me: Yep. Piper’s already asleep.
A few seconds pass. Then…
Toothpick: Good.
That’s it.
Just… ‘Good.’
But somehow that one word says everything I need it to.
I set my phone on the nightstand, and when it vibrates again just after eleven, I reach for it without even looking, and the smile is already there.
I expect to see Ghost’s name.
But, I don’t.
Unknown: Your sister started her new job a week ago. The state contract her studio just picked up goes through Calloway’s committee. That contract can be canceled on a technicality. It would be a shame for her to lose it so soon after moving.
My stomach drops so fast I have to sit up on the edge of my bed.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
My thumb hovers over the screen while my pulse hammers somewhere in my throat.
This isn’t Unsilenced anymore.
This isn’t the group home inquiry, or the families, or even me.
They found Piper.
They found the one thing I would burn every file I own to protect. So, I call the number back before I can talk myself out of it. It rings twice and disconnects.
My hands are shaking when I type out…
Me: Who are you?
And hit send.
The message shows delivered, but nothing comes back.
I sit in the darkness of my bedroom for a long time, phone gripped so tight my knuckles ache, waiting for an answer that isn’t coming.
The Next Morning
Outside Unsilenced in the parking garage, the car becomes a refuge for a full minute before I make myself get out. People smile as they pass me on their way inside, and I smile back. It feels like I’m wearing someone else’s face.
The text message sits in my pocket all the way to my office.
I’ve read it enough times to know every word by heart.
My director’s door is open, and she looks up when I knock lightly against the frame. “Sage.” She smiles. “Got a minute?”
“I actually…” My voice almost catches before I clear it. “Can I steal one of yours?”
“Of course.” She gestures to the chair opposite her desk.
I sit, my hands fold together in my lap.
“Everything okay?”
The lie is there before I have taken a breath. “I’ve been thinking about the group home inquiry.” She nods once, waiting. “I think we should slow it down.” The words barely make it past my lips. “Just… temporarily.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Slow it down?”
“We’ve been moving pretty hard for months.” I hear myself talking, hear how calm I sound, and hate every single word that comes out of my mouth. “I think we need to shore up a few things before we keep pushing.”
She studies me for a long second, and it is enough that I wonder if she’s about to tell me she knows I’m lying. Instead, the tension leaves her shoulders in one slow breath. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Something twists hard in my stomach. “You were?”
She smiles, tired more than anything else. “I’ve been worried about you.”
Not the investigation… me!
“You’ve barely taken a day off in months.” I nod because that’s easier than speaking. “We’re not abandoning it,” she continues. “We’re just giving ourselves room to breathe.”
I force myself to smile. “Exactly.”
She reaches across the desk and gives my hand a quick squeeze. “I’m proud of you for recognizing your limits.”
The guilt almost knocks the air out of me because those aren’t my limits—they are Piper’s.
She lets go. “Take the rest of the day if you need it.”
I stand before she has a chance to see whatever is happening on my face. “I-I think I will.”
Somehow, I make it through the rest of the conversation.
Somehow, I walk back through the office.
Somehow, I smile at people who smile at me.
And somehow, I make it all the way to my car before everything inside me starts coming apart. The engine stays off. The parking garage is quiet except for the occasional car passing somewhere overhead, tires humming across concrete before fading away again.
My hands are wrapped around the steering wheel.
I don’t even remember putting them there.
Three years. The number rolls through my head with crushing finality.
Three fucking years of tireless work!
Twelve families who trusted me with the worst thing that’s ever happened to them.
Twenty-three accounts gathered one careful conversation at a time.
I close my eyes.
And in a single morning, I folded.
Not because I stopped believing in what we are doing.
Not because I was afraid for myself.
Because someone found Piper.
Because someone threatened Ghost.
Because they looked at everything I’ve spent my life trying to protect, and they knew exactly where to twist the knife.
I pull up the files on my laptop right there in the car. Three years’ worth of work fills the screen—families, photographs, testimonies. I read every account again, match every face to a name, and revisit every reason I started this in the first place.
Then I close the laptop and sit with my hands on the wheel, my forehead against them, for a minute.
Then I open the files again, and I keep working, because I am not stopping.
I need to be smarter about how I move forward.