Chapter 8 Matt
Angela's door was unlocked.
I stepped inside and stopped. The mess hit me first: dishes overflowing the sink, a week of meals she never cleaned up.
Wine bottles lined the counter like a row of little defeats.
The blinds were shut, the room lit only by a lonely lamp that made everything look worse, every shadow deeper.
And the smell… old wine, old sweat, and something sour underneath it all, like the place was rotting from the inside out.
Angela was on the couch, another bottle already open on the coffee table, glass in her hand. Mascara streaked down her cheeks, and her bun had come half undone, frizzy strands sticking out like she’d been tugging at it for hours. Her red-rimmed eyes snapped to mine the second I walked in.
"Matt." She set the glass down too hard, wine sloshing over the rim onto a stack of unopened mail. "Oh God, Matt, I'm so sorry. I forgot about the cameras. I completely fucking forgot. I've been so distracted lately, with everything going on, and I just… I didn't think—"
"Hey." I held up my hands. "Hey, slow down. It's okay."
"It's not okay." She was on her feet now, pacing, arms wrapped around herself. "It's not okay, Matt. She knows. She knows everything. What are we gonna do? What the fuck are we gonna do?"
"We're going to figure it out." I kept my voice calm and steady, the same tone I used on the job when things were falling apart and someone needed to hold it together. "Just… sit down, okay? Let's talk this through. Once Elena calms down, I'll talk to her. We'll work something out."
Angela let out a sharp, bitter laugh.
"Work something out?" She turned to face me, eyes wild. "Don't you get it? If Bryan finds out, I'm fucked. He'll divorce me, I'll lose the house. I'll lose the clinic—"
"You won't lose the clinic."
"I will." She grabbed the wine glass again, took a long swallow. "Bryan’s been… God, he’s been covering my ass for months. The clinic’s a disaster and he just… keeps paying things. But he hates it, Matt. He hates it. He doesn’t say it, but I see it every time he looks at the books."
She kept talking, rambling about expenses, about trying to keep things afloat… but my mind was already running ahead.
Bryan had been covering the clinic’s shortfalls for months, stepping in every time things slipped, and right around then Angela had offered Elena that partnership.
I’d thought it was a recognition of her work, something she’d earned, but the timing fit together too neatly to ignore.
The buy-in wasn’t a reward; it was a way to funnel Elena’s savings into a clinic already sinking.
I tried to tell myself Angela wasn’t calculated like that, that she’d just been desperate and not thinking straight, but the pieces clicked into place anyway. And Elena… she couldn’t have known.
The realization carried its own kind of shame.
I looked at Angela. Mascara-streaked, wine-soaked, falling apart on her couch… and tried to find the woman I thought I knew. The one who was struggling and needed help.
She wasn't a bad person. She was just... lost.
Right?
I sank onto the arm of the couch and tried to breathe.
"Okay," I said slowly. "Okay, so we figure out another way. I'll talk to Elena, explain that—"
"You're not listening to me." Angela's voice went hard, almost feral. "Elena… she gave me an ultimatum."
My stomach dropped. "What do you mean?"
"She told me I have until tomorrow night to tell Bryan everything." Angela's hand was shaking around the glass. "If I don't, she's sending him the footage herself."
The words knocked something loose in me.
Elena, my calm, gentle Elena who cried over old dogs and whispered apologies to animals she vaccinated.
She'd given Angela a deadline.
"That's..." I started, then stopped. I didn't know what to make of it. Except… no. I knew exactly what this was.
Elena didn't fuck around. She never had.
There was a steel in her that most people didn't see because she kept it sheathed. But I'd seen glimpses over the years. In the quiet way she survived her mother’s death, in the grit that built her career from nothing, and in the way she stared at me tonight, like she was bracing for confirmation that I wasn’t who she thought I was.
I should have known Elena wouldn't just cry and crumble.
"So yeah," Angela said flatly. "We're fucked."
She dropped onto the couch beside me. I could smell the wine on her breath, the stale perfume, the desperation coming off her in waves.
The lamp cast everything in dim yellow light, shadows pooled in the corners of the room. Outside, a car passed, headlights sweeping across the blinds and disappearing. The silence pressed in.
I was so tired, bone tired. The kind of exhaustion that goes deeper than sleep, that settles into your marrow and makes everything feel far away and muffled. My defenses were down, the weight of the night crushing what little resolve I’d been clinging to.
"Matt," Angela said quietly. Her hand found my knee, gave it a small, searching squeeze. "What are we going to do?"
I looked at her, at this woman I'd risked everything for, thrown away my marriage for… and all I saw was someone small and fragile.
Her hand slid higher. Her face tilted up toward mine.
"Angela—"
"We're already fucked," she whispered. "What's one more—"
And God help me, I wanted to. How easy would it be to just give in, lose myself in her the way I had before, let the heat and the skin and the not-thinking take over? Let it wipe everything out. The pain in Elena’s face, the footage, the fire chewing through my life.
It would feel good. For a few minutes, it would feel so fucking good.
Angela’s fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt, and she leaned closer. I could feel her breath on my neck, and my body was responding even as my mind screamed at me to stop.
I stood up so fast the couch scraped back against the floor.
"I have to go."
"Matt, wait—"
But I was already moving, backing toward the door before the rest of me caught up. My hands shook, my chest cinched tight, the room closing in fast. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I just knew I had to get out of there.
"Matt!"
I didn't look back.