15. Nora
— ? —
Nora
It happens at the bar.
I’m reaching for my glass (champagne, because why not?) when my sleeve slides back.
Theo’s eyes find me from across the room, and even now - even here, in a ballroom full of knives - my skin remembers his hands from two nights ago. Not now, I tell my body. Later. Survive first, want him later. My body has never once listened to me where he’s concerned.
Just an inch. Just enough.
Adrian never made it through those doors. He’s beside me before I realize he’s crossed the room, Brielle left standing at the exit with his name half out of her mouth.
The birthmark.
His whole body goes still. Every muscle locks into place like a man who’s just been shot and hasn’t realized it yet.
“That’s not possible.”
Around us, the party continues (laughter, music, the clink of expensive glasses) but we might as well be alone in the room.
His eyes are fixed on that small patch of darker skin, that archipelago I’ve carried since birth, that proof of a life I used to have.
His thumb traces the edges without permission, mapping territory he used to know by heart.
“Mr. Walker-”
“Don’t.” His voice is strangled, cracking on the single syllable. His grip tightens until I can feel my pulse throbbing against his palm. “Don’t you dare call me that.”
“Adrian-”
“That’s her birthmark.” He’s shaking. His whole body is shaking.
A fine tremor that starts in his hands and radiates outward until even his jaw is trembling.
“That’s - I kissed that mark every morning.
I memorized every island. I used to trace them with my finger while she was sleeping, and then she died, and I-”
His voice breaks. Shatters. Falls to pieces on the ballroom floor between us.
“And you what?”
“Nora.” The name falls out of his mouth like a sob.
Like a prayer. Like a curse he’s been holding behind his teeth for two years.
His knees buckle, and this time nothing catches him.
He goes down in front of the entire gala, one hand gripping the bar rail, kneeling on the marble without ever deciding to. “Nora. It’s not possible. It can’t be-”
A glass hits the floor behind us.
The sound is sharp, explosive - a small bomb detonating in the middle of polite conversation. Champagne spreads across the marble like liquid gold, and standing in the center of the mess is Brielle.
She’s ten feet away, champagne splashed across her designer shoes, her face a mask of horror. Her hand is still extended, frozen in the shape of the glass she was holding. Her mouth opens and closes without sound, a fish drowning in air.
“Adrian.” Her voice is high. Thin. A wire stretched to its breaking point. “What are you-”
“Look at her arm.” He’s still holding my wrist, still staring at the birthmark like it might disappear if he blinks. His eyes are wet now, tears gathering at the corners. “Look at it, Brielle. Tell me I’m insane. Tell me I’m seeing things.”
Brielle looks.
Her gaze drops to the birthmark. Lingers. Her pupils dilate with recognition, with memory, with the kind of terror that lives in the bones.
Her face goes white. Not pale - white. The color of fresh snow. Of bleached bone. Of a woman watching her carefully constructed world crumble to ash.
“We need to go,” she says. Her voice has gone flat, mechanical. She’s already moving toward Adrian, her heels crunching through the broken glass without flinching. “Right now. Both of us.”
“Not until she tells me-”
“Adrian.” Brielle grabs his other arm, her manicured nails digging into his jacket hard enough to leave marks. Her eyes are wild, darting between us, calculating escape routes. “Think about what you’re saying. Think about where we are.”
“I don’t care where we are!” He wheels on her, wrenching free of her grip. His voice rises, cracking through the ambient noise of the party like thunder. Heads turn. Conversations stutter and stop. “You were dead. We watched-”
He stops.
His mouth hangs open. His face drains of color to match his wife’s.
We. Watched.
Two words that answer two years of questions. Two words that land in my chest like bullets, burrowing deep, finding the places that never stopped bleeding.
“We watched what?” I ask. My voice is calm. I didn’t know I could be this calm. I feel like I’m floating above my own body, watching this scene unfold from somewhere near the chandeliers. “What did you watch, Adrian?”
“I - that’s not what I-” He’s backing away now, his hands coming up like he’s warding off a blow. His heel catches on something, a chair leg, someone’s foot, and he stumbles. Catches himself. Keeps retreating.
“You were there.” The truth settles into my bones. Heavy. Final. The weight of everything I suspected, confirmed in a single slip of the tongue. “On the riverbank. Both of you. You found me in the water, and you-”
“We tried to help.” Brielle’s voice is desperate, climbing toward hysteria. She’s gripping Adrian’s arm again, her knuckles white as chalk. “We tried, but the current - the rain-”
“Then why did you drive away?”
Silence.
Nobody breathes. Somewhere behind us a fork touches a plate and stops.
Around us, people have started to notice.
Really notice. The argument by the bar is no longer background noise - it’s the main event.
A circle of spectators has formed, champagne flutes frozen halfway to lips, conversations abandoned mid-sentence.
The woman with the birthmark. The husband and wife who look like they’re seeing a ghost.
Because they are. They are looking at a ghost, and the ghost is asking questions that don’t have good answers.
Theo appears at my shoulder. His presence is warm and solid, an anchor in the storm. His hand finds the small of my back, steadying me in ways he doesn’t even know.
His thumb moves once against my spine, the same small stroke from the dance floor, and my body answers it even here, even now.
Two hours ago that hand was promising me things against silk.
I lean into it half an inch and let his heat hold me upright while my marriage finishes dying in front of every guest at the gala.
Not the time, the voice tries. Your husband is coming apart ten feet away. It is obscene to want anything right now.
It’s obscene, I agree, and I want him anyway. Two years in the ground recalibrates your obscenities.
“Nora.”
The name lands like a bomb.
The ripple spreads outward - gasps, whispers, the rustle of expensive fabric as people lean closer. Nora? Wasn’t that the first wife? The one who drowned? The one whose funeral we attended two years ago?
Adrian actually staggers back. His face cycles through shock, betrayal, fury - a slot machine of emotions that finally lands on devastation. “Theo. You knew?”
“I knew.” Theo’s voice is steady. Calm. The voice of a man who has already made peace with this moment.
“For how long?” Adrian’s hands have curled into fists at his sides. A vein pulses visibly at his temple.
“Long enough.” Theo shifts slightly, positioning himself between me and Adrian. Protective. Ready. “Long enough to understand exactly what kind of man you are.”
Fifteen years of friendship, burning down in front of the whole room, and he doesn’t even glance at the flames.
My hand has found his sleeve without asking my permission - fingers curled into the fabric at his elbow, holding on in full view of everyone.
My body files it under later and keeps holding his sleeve.
“And you didn’t-” Adrian runs a hand through his hair. “You knew she was alive, and you didn’t tell me? You let me think - for two years, you let me think-”
“I let you think what you made yourself believe.” Theo’s voice is cold. “That she drowned. That the river took her. That you could move on with the woman you were already sleeping with before your wife’s car hit the water.”
Brielle makes a small, wounded sound.
“That’s not fair,” Adrian says. “You don’t understand-”
“Then make me understand.” Theo steps forward. “Make me understand how you stood on that bank with a flashlight while she was drowning, and you chose to drive away. Make me understand what she did to deserve being left to die by the two people who should have loved her most.”
“I loved her!” Adrian’s voice tears open, splitting down the middle like something that’s been held together too long.
His hands come up to grip his own hair, pulling hard enough that it must hurt.
“I loved her, and I made one mistake, one terrible mistake, and then she found out, and she drove off, and I tried to follow her, but the rain - and when I saw the car go over-”
“What did you do?” I keep my voice flat. Controlled. My nails are cutting crescents into my palms.
“I ran down to the bank.” Tears are running down Adrian’s face, dripping off his jaw, soaking into his collar. He doesn’t seem to notice. Doesn’t wipe them away. “I had my flashlight. I could see the car in the water. She was still moving. I could see her trying to-”
His voice breaks. He presses the heel of his hand against his chest like something is cracking open inside him.
“And?”
“And I was going to jump in.” His voice drops to barely a whisper. His whole body is shaking now, trembling so hard his teeth are almost chattering. “I was going to save her. But Brielle-”
He stops.
Looks at his wife. She’s gone white, her lips pressed into a thin line, her arms wrapped around herself like she’s trying to hold her body together.
Looks back at me.
“Brielle said - she said the current was too strong. She said if I went in, we’d both die. She said we should call someone, get help, but my phone was in the car and hers was dead and-”
“And?” I step closer. My voice doesn’t waver.
“And then-” He swallows. His throat clicks, dry and desperate. “Then she stopped moving. The car went under. And I turned to Brielle, and I said-”
He can’t finish it. Two years, and he still can’t say it out loud. His mouth opens and closes. His hands drop to his sides, limp and useless.