10. Declan
DECLAN
The phone pressed against my ear feels like a lifeline to something that doesn't matter. Lian drones on about the north side distribution point—inventory counts, product quality, the usual shit that should require my full attention but just fills the empty hours.
"—and Tommy wants to know if you want him to get Phillips or if you'll be there—"
"Whatever he thinks is best." The words taste like ash. Everything tastes like ash.
My phone buzzes against my cheek. Bianca. Third time in twenty minutes.
I let it go to voicemail.
"Boss? You still there?"
"Yeah." I watch the screen light up again. Same name. Same grating persistence. "Lian, handle it however makes sense. You don't need me signing off on every decision."
"Right, but Stellan said—"
"Then ask Stellan." The edge in my voice makes him pause. I force myself to soften it, marginally. "You've been doing this long enough. Trust your gut."
He agrees, relieved, and I end the call before he can ask anything else that requires me to pretend I give a shit about product distribution or territory management or any of the thousand details that used to consume my days.
The phone buzzes immediately. Bianca again.
I silence it and shove it in my pocket.
Going home means listening to her talk about whatever social function she's planning or complain about the caterer or shriek into her phone at her sister about God knows what.
It means walking through rooms that echo with nothing, past her expensive perfume that clings to everything like a stain, into a bedroom that feels more like a cell than the actual cells I've put people in.
Stellan's place would be better, but he's out handling problems that I should be with him on. Too bad that things feel strained between us—probably because I've become as soulless as he accuses me of.
I used to be made for this job. I could handle anything, force anyone back in line. I was great at breaking things—laws and people's will to live mostly.
Now I just go through the motions, waiting for someone to break me instead.
The sun hits the pavement at an angle that suggests late afternoon. I've been walking for the better part of an hour, no destination, just movement because standing still means thinking and thinking means—
I should check the warehouse in Fishtown.
Haven't been by there in a few days, and Danny mentioned something about a shipment last week that I should probably verify personally.
It's not necessary, but it's something to do that isn't going back to that mausoleum and listening to Bianca's voice drill into my skull.
I'm about to head that direction when something catches my eye.
A woman, half a block ahead, turning the corner onto Locust. Dark braids catching the light in a way that makes my chest constrict before my brain even processes why. The way she moves—strikes me as far too familiar.
It can't be.
My feet move before I decide to move them, closing the distance but keeping back far enough that I won't— that she won't—
I made her a promise. I never went looking. Told everyone who worked for me that if they saw her, I didn't want to know. She asked me for one thing the entire time I knew her and I gave it to her even though it felt like carving out my own organs with a dull knife.
But this isn't looking. This is just— this is walking in the same direction. This is coincidence.
This is a lie I tell myself as I follow her down Locust toward Rittenhouse.
She pauses at a crosswalk and I get a better view. Same height. Same build. The braids are longer than I remember, copper-toned and intricate, falling past her shoulders. She used to like them short, but maybe she's changed.
She's wearing jeans and a loose white shirt that moves with her when she shifts her weight, checking her phone with one hand while the other—
The light changes and she moves again, crossing the street with that same economical grace that used to make me want to watch her do simple things for hours.
Making coffee. Reading on the couch with her feet tucked under her.
Standing at the stove while I tried to teach her to make risotto and she insisted it was "just fancy rice. "
Everything in my chest feels too tight, like my ribcage decided to contract and crush every vital organ at once.
It can't be her. Philadelphia's a big city. Lots of women have braids. Lots of women move like they're used to carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.
She turns her head slightly, looking at something in a shop window, and I see her profile.
My heart stops.
It's her.
Eight years. Eight years of forcing myself not to look, not to ask, not to use every resource at my disposal to track her down and make sure she was safe and alive and—
She's here. In Philadelphia. Walking down Locust like it's nothing, like she didn't rip out my chest and take it with her to wherever she went.
I should turn around. Should walk away and pretend I never saw her, honor the one thing she asked of me even though seeing her now feels like coming back to life after being dead so long I forgot what breathing felt like.
But I can't. Can't make my feet move in any direction except forward, maintaining the same distance, watching her like a starving man watches food through a window he can't break.
She's more beautiful than I remember. The years have sharpened something in her face, made the angles more defined, but she's still— she's still everything I ever wanted and destroyed in the same breath.
The vanilla scent probably doesn't reach me from this distance but I swear I can smell it anyway, can remember exactly how it mixed with coffee and the laundry detergent she always used. Can remember burying my face in her neck and breathing her in like she was the only air I needed.
She stops outside a bookstore—Storybound Books, the sign reads—and adjusts something on her chest that I can't quite see from this angle. Then she turns to face the window, saying something to herself, and I see it.
The baby.
Strapped to her chest in one of those carrier things, facing her. Small. Less than a year—I've never been good at guessing ages for kids. But definitely a baby. Definitely hers, based on the way she's looking down at it with an expression I've never seen on her face before.
Soft. Tender. Completely absorbed.
"Look, baby girl," she says, voice carrying just far enough that I catch it. "I need to get inventory done but you're being so good for me, yeah? Such a good girl."
The baby makes some noise I can't hear and Zola laughs. Actually laughs. The sound hits me like a bullet through the sternum.
She had a baby.
She's here, in Philadelphia, with a baby strapped to her chest and that expression on her face like this tiny person is her entire world, and I'm standing thirty feet away realizing that everything I thought I understood about the last eight years was wrong.
I knew that she said I needed to move on. But some part of me always thought that Zola did this to protect herself, that her heart was as much mine as mine is hers.
That's not what happened.
Instead, she left and built a whole life. Found someone else. Had the family we used to whisper about at three in the morning when we thought we were too young but maybe someday—
My throat closes. Actually closes. I can't swallow, can't breathe, can't do anything except watch her adjust the baby's position and press a kiss to its head—dark curls, darker than Zola's, visible even from here—before opening the bookstore door and disappearing inside.
The street feels very quiet suddenly.
Very empty.
I should leave. Should walk away, go to Fishtown, check the warehouse, call Lian back and ask about something that doesn't matter. Should go home to Bianca and her expensive perfume and the life I agreed to because I had nothing left worth protecting.
Instead I stand here on Locust Street staring at a bookstore window like I'll spontaneously develop x-ray vision if I just focus hard enough.
She had a baby.
The thought repeats itself, stuck on loop, driving deeper each time until it hits something I thought had gone numb years ago.
This is what I wanted. Exactly this. Zola, and a life with her, and kids that would have her sharp mind and stubborn independence.
I used to imagine it in the apartment we shared—her pregnant and complaining about swollen ankles while I cooked dinner, a baby that looked like her learning to walk while holding onto my fingers, teaching them to be better than both of us combined.
But she can't have kids. The accident destroyed that possibility. Dr. Reeves was clear about it, explained the emergency hysterectomy in clinical terms that meant Zola would never carry a child.
Unless the doctors were wrong. Unless somehow—
No. I saw the medical reports. There was no ambiguity.
Maybe the baby is someone else's and she's just helping, being Zola, always taking care of people who need her.
Or maybe she met someone else and they built this together, adopted or found a way, and I'm standing on a street corner realizing that she moved on while I spent all this time bleeding out in slow motion.
The baby's features flash through my memory. Dark curls. Hard to tell much else from the brief glimpse, but clearly loved. Clearly hers in every way that matters.
She probably has a whole life now. A partner, a home, this bookstore she just walked into like she belongs there. Probably thinks about me sometimes, maybe, in the way you think about things you survived.
The phone in my pocket buzzes again. Bianca. Fourth call. Or fifth. I've lost count.
I should answer it. Should go home. Should stop standing here like some lovesick teenager watching a girl who asked me eight years ago to let her go.
But seeing her just now, watching her smile down at that baby with an expression I never quite earned from her—proud and fierce and completely at peace—splits me open in a way I didn't know was still possible.
I'm not bleeding anymore. Bleeding implies there's something left to lose.