Chapter 13 Beckett
Theo leans back on the couch, smirking at his phone. "She called him to her room," he says to Silas. "That's not grief."
"What did you say to her to make her come crawling back?" Silas asks.
"Nothing."
Silas gestures at the TV with his beer. "You going?"
"Not yet."
Theo exhales vape smoke toward the ceiling. "Don't keep her waiting too long. Desperation has a shelf life."
I watch the puck ricochet off the boards. The Canucks' center intercepts and takes a shot. Blocked.
Twenty minutes pass. Silas stops asking. Theo stops commenting. I stand, pick up my keys.
"524B," Theo says without looking up. "Fifth floor. Apartment 24. Room B."
"I know."
I feel his attention on my back as I walk out.
The lobby of Elm Hall is quiet. The elevator ride up feels longer than it should. I check my phone — no follow-up texts. She hasn't changed her mind.
I knock twice on the correct door.
She opens it quickly, like she’s been waiting. Her eyes are red-rimmed and shoulders drawn in. She looks like someone wrung her out and set her down.
"I didn't think you'd come," she says.
"I said I would."
She steps back and lets me in. She points down the short hallway. "That's my room."
I follow her in and stop just inside the doorway.
The room is almost entirely bare. Bed. Desk. One suitcase. No photos, no posters, nothing personal on the walls. She's been here long enough to unpack and hasn't.
She closes the door and wraps her arms around herself, standing in the middle of the room like she's not sure what to do with the space.
"I don't really know why I called you," she says. "I just needed someone who wouldn't—" She stops. "I don't know."
"Is he dead?"
Her eyes go wide. "No. God, no. I was just there. He's still—" She presses her hand to her mouth. "Sorry. Of course, you'd think that."
"Then what happened?"
She sits on the edge of the bed and takes a breath that doesn't quite finish. "He was cheating on me."
I watch her chest rise and fall too fast. The sound she makes trying to hold herself together — I didn't expect heartbreak to sound like this up close.
"How do you know?"
"His laptop. I found a file." She looks up. "I only watched a few seconds. That was more than enough."
I sit beside her, leaving distance between us. "Could have been old."
"It wasn't." She says it quietly, with the particular certainty of someone who recognized something they wish they hadn't.
I keep my face still.
Theo's wrong about her.
She is exactly what she appears to be — someone who built her whole life around a version of Cody that he performed for her specifically. And now she's sitting in a bare room in a city she moved to for him, holding the edges of that performance in her hands.
That complicates things.
"You were his teammate," she says. "Did you ever see him with anyone?"
"No."
The lie comes out clean. She nods and accepts it, which should feel like a win.
It doesn't, particularly.
"You should lie down," I say quietly.
She looks at me for a moment, reading my tone, my posture. Whatever she finds there seems to satisfy her, because she kicks off her boots and moves back on the bed.
I stay seated at the edge.
She reaches out and touches my arm — just her fingers, barely — then lets go when she realizes I'm not standing.
"Does this make you single?" I ask.
She stares at the ceiling. The thought clearly hadn't occurred to her until now.
"Are you going to stop visiting him?" I ask, reframing my question.
"I was thinking about it." Something hardens in her expression. "But that would make me a suspect, wouldn't it?"
"Probably."
She closes her eyes. "I can't stop going." A beat. "Even though I want to."
"Would you?" I ask. "If he were awake and well. Suppose you'd found out the same way. Would you walk away?"
She turns her head toward me. "He would be dead to me."
She means it. There's no performance in it, no heat — just the flat, certain clarity of someone who's crossed a line they didn't know existed until this moment.
I lie down beside her, close enough to feel warmth but not touching.
"Isn’t this the same thing?" I ask.
She doesn't answer. I don't push it.
After a while, she says, "Did I do something? I keep thinking — what did I miss?"
"Nothing you were supposed to see."
She turns to look at me. I'm not sure why I said it like that. She seems to take it as comfort.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm a disaster."
"You're not what’s broken here."
I reach over and wipe her face with my thumb — the wetness at the corner of her eye, the tear track along her cheekbone. I drag my thumb to the edge of her mouth before I realize I’m doing it. Her breath catches slightly.
I pull my hand back and look at the ceiling.
I can feel her watching my profile in the dark for a long time before her breathing finally slows and evens out.
She shifts in her sleep. Turns and presses her back against my chest. I settle my arm over her waist and let her in.
She fits there easily.
She trusts me.
That's the part I keep coming back to.
Theo thinks this is simple. A means to an end. Information and leverage, and a girl stupid enough to provide both.
I'm starting to think he's miscalculated something.
I'm not sure yet if it's her — or me.