Chapter 3- JADE
Three days pass without a word from the police.
I tell myself that's a good thing. No news is good news, isn't that what people say? If they had evidence, if they'd found something in Marcus's car or discovered the grave in the mountains, they would have come back. They would have knocked on the door with handcuffs.
But the silence feels like its own kind of torture.
Every time my phone buzzes, my heart stops.
Every time a car slows down on the street outside, I freeze at the window, watching, waiting for the flash of red and blue lights that will end everything.
I can't eat without feeling sick. I can't sleep without dreaming of blood and frozen earth.
Phoenix handles it better than I do, or at least he's better at pretending.
He goes back to work, takes calls, answers emails, moves through his days like nothing has changed.
But I see the tension in his shoulders when he thinks I'm not looking.
I notice the way his eyes dart to the door whenever there's an unexpected sound.
He's as scared as I am. He's just had more practice hiding it.
I need a distraction. Something to occupy my mind besides the endless loop of fear and guilt and what-ifs that plays on repeat every waking moment.
So I start writing.
It's not the literary fiction I studied in my MFA program, the atmospheric pieces about nothing that my professors praised and no one wanted to publish.
This is different. This is a fantasy world with magic and dragons and a ruthless rebellion fighting against a tyrannical king.
It's a romance wrapped in adventure, the kind of story I used to devour as a teenager.
The words come faster than anything I've ever written.
I sit at the kitchen table with my laptop, and hours disappear while I build this world that exists only in my head.
The heroine is a palace scribe, a half-elf passing as full elf, quietly surviving under a regime she doesn't love but doesn't dare fight.
She knows an ancient language that makes her valuable, that puts her in the path of dangerous people.
She's cautious in ways I wish I had been, but brave when it matters most.
The rebel leader who kidnaps her is nothing like the monster she's been taught to fear.
He's hardened and guarded, driven by loss and consumed by his cause.
Dangerous to everyone except her. He sees something in her that she doesn't see in herself, and their alliance slowly becomes something neither of them expected.
Their love is the kind that burns. The kind that makes people choose between comfort and revolution, between the life they know and the truth they can no longer ignore.
It's not subtle. I know who I'm really writing about.
I find myself posting the chapters online as I finish them, one at a time, on a site where amateur writers share their work for free.
It feels reckless in a way I can't explain, putting pieces of myself out there for strangers to read.
But it also feels necessary. Like if I can make sense of what's happening in fiction, maybe I can make sense of it in real life.
Phoenix notices, of course.
"What are you working on?" he asks one afternoon, looking up from his own laptop where he's been reviewing contracts.
”A novel." I angle my screen away from him instinctively. "Just something I'm playing with."
"Can I read it?"
"No." The word comes out sharper than I intended. I soften it with a smile. "Not yet. It's not ready."
He raises an eyebrow but doesn't push. "Is it like your other writing? The short stories?"
"Not exactly." I hesitate, trying to find the right words. "It's more genre. Fantasy romance. Probably not your thing."
"Everything you write is my thing." He says it simply, like it's obvious, like there's no world in which he wouldn't want to read every word I put on paper. The sincerity in his voice makes my chest tight. "But I can wait. Just promise you'll let me read it when it's done."
"I promise."
He goes back to his work, and I go back to mine, and for a few hours the silence between us feels almost normal and peaceful. Like we're just two people sharing a quiet afternoon, not two people bound together by blood and secrets and the body buried somewhere in the Angeles National Forest.
The sound of Phoenix's phone shatters the illusion.
I watch his face as he answers, trying to read his expression for any sign of danger. Police? Lawyers? But his features stay neutral, controlled, giving nothing away.
"Dad," he says, and something in my stomach unclenches. Not the police. Just his father.
I go back to my writing, but I can't focus. I catch fragments of the conversation drifting across the room.
"Yes, I know we missed it. Something came up."
A pause while Nicholas says something I can't hear.
"This weekend? That's only a few days away."
Another pause, longer this time. Phoenix's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
"No, I understand. We'll be there." He glances at me, and there's something apologetic in his eyes. "I said we'll be there. Tell Mom to stop worrying."
He ends the call and sets the phone down on the table with exaggerated care, like he's resisting the urge to throw it against the wall.
"Let me guess," I say. "Dinner is rescheduled."
"This Saturday." He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture I've come to recognize as his tell for stress. "My father made it clear that missing this one isn't an option. His exact words were 'no excuses.'"
My stomach drops. Meeting Phoenix's parents was terrifying enough before the police showed up asking about Marcus Webb.
Now the thought of sitting across a dinner table from Nicholas and Olive Crawford, making small talk while pretending I'm not an accessory to murder, makes me want to crawl under the bed and never come out.
"Phoenix, I don't know if I can do this."
"You can." He crosses the room and kneels in front of my chair, taking my hands in his. His palms are warm and steady, anchoring me. "They're just my parents. They're going to love you."
"They don't know anything about me." The words come out thin, strained. "They don't know I'm Sydney Catalano's daughter."
Phoenix is quiet for a moment. His thumbs trace circles on the backs of my hands, a soothing rhythm that does nothing to calm the panic rising in my chest.
"No," he says finally. "They don't."
"What happens when they find out?" I pull my hands away and stand, pacing to the window.
The ocean stretches out before me, endless and indifferent.
"Your mother and mine were best friends.
Something happened between them, something bad enough that my mom refuses to talk about it.
What if Olive hates me just because of who my mother is? "
"She won't."
"You don't know that."
"I know my mother." Phoenix comes up behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders.
I can feel the heat of him through my shirt, solid and reassuring.
"She can be cold, I won't deny that. She takes time to warm up to people.
But she's not unreasonable. And whatever happened between her and your mother was a long time ago. It has nothing to do with you."
I want to believe him. I want to believe that I can walk into that dinner on Saturday and charm his parents with my wit and intelligence, that they'll see me as Jade Catalano, aspiring writer and devoted girlfriend, rather than the daughter of the woman who was once his mom’s best friend.
But I know how these things work. I know how quickly first impressions form and how hard they are to change. If Olive finds out who I am before she has a chance to know me, I'll be fighting an uphill battle from the start.
"Maybe I should tell them," I say quietly. "Get it out in the open before they can find out some other way."
"Or maybe we let them meet you first." Phoenix turns me to face him, his eyes searching mine. "Let them see who you are before they learn whose daughter you are. Give them a chance to know you without all that history getting in the way."
"You mean lie to them."
"I mean give them context." He cups my face in his hands, gentle despite the tension I can feel humming beneath his skin.
"You're not your mother, Jade. You're not responsible for whatever happened between them.
When they meet you, they're going to see a brilliant, beautiful woman who makes me happier than I've ever been. That's what matters."
I lean into his touch, letting myself believe it for just a moment. "And if your mother recognizes my last name?"
"Catalano isn't exactly uncommon. And even if she makes the connection, I'll handle it. I'll explain that you didn't know about the history, that you came into this relationship without any agenda."
"Did I?" The question slips out before I can stop it. "Come into this without an agenda, I mean? You paid off my debts, Phoenix. You brought me here. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t done that."
Something flickers in his expression, too fast for me to identify. Hurt? Guilt? Fear?
"I didn't buy you," he says, his voice rough. "That money was a gift. I told you that from the beginning. What happened between us, what's still happening, that's real."
"I know." I reach up and cover his hands with mine. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm just scared, and when I'm scared I say stupid things."
"Meeting my parents isn't going to change anything between us."
"That's not what I'm afraid of."
He waits for me to continue, patient as always, and I struggle to put my fears into words that make sense.
"I'm afraid of ruining this," I finally say.
"Not just with your parents, but all of it.
Every time something good happens, I'm waiting for it to fall apart.
And now with the police investigation, with everything that's happened, it feels like the universe is just waiting for the right moment to take it all away. "
Phoenix pulls me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me. I breathe in the scent of him, clean cotton and something underneath that's just him. My ear presses against his heartbeat, steady and strong.
"The universe can try," he murmurs into my hair. "But I'm not letting you go. Not for my parents, not for the police, not for anything. Do you understand?"
I nod against his chest, not trusting my voice.
"Saturday is going to be fine. You're going to wear something beautiful, and we're going to show up at my parents' house, and they're going to see exactly what I see when I look at you. Someone worth fighting for."
I pull back to look at him, this man who killed for me, who would do anything to keep me safe. His dark eyes are fierce with certainty, and for a moment I let myself believe that everything really will be okay.
"Okay," I whisper. "Saturday. No excuses."
He kisses me then, soft and sweet, a promise sealed with the press of his lips against mine.
When we finally break apart, my phone buzzes on the table. I glance at the screen, expecting spam or a notification from the writing site where I've been posting my chapters.
It's a text from an unknown number.
My blood turns to ice as I read the words on the screen.
I know what he did. And soon, everyone else will too.