Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Julian
The storm has settled over the campus with enough force that the rain no longer sounds like rain.
It hits the windows in heavy sheets, driven sideways by wind that bends the trees beyond the glass and turns the outer walkways into silver streaks beneath the security lights.
Every few minutes, thunder rolls somewhere over the hills and rattles faintly through the building.
Sophie and I end up in one of the smaller executive dining rooms off the main lounge because neither of us feels like going back to our rooms yet.
Dinner is simple by Blackwell standards: grilled chicken, roasted vegetables, bread, and whatever the kitchen staff managed to keep available before most of them headed home or moved into the overnight staff quarters.
There is a stocked refrigerator behind the bar, so I grab two beers and set one in front of Sophie.
She looks at the bottle.
“You remembered what type of beer I drink?”
I sit across from her.
“You drank beer in Boston.”
“That was only once. Seven years ago. And I definitely drank more wine.”
“I have a decent memory.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“Apparently.”
I twist the cap from my bottle.
The answer carries enough weight that neither of us follows it.
For the next twenty minutes, we keep the conversation where it is safe.
The facility.
The tour.
The technology.
Sophie asks about the campus expansion, and I explain how the site grew from a smaller research operation into the center of our advanced systems work.
She listens with the same concentration she had years ago, pen resting beside her plate even though she has finally stopped taking notes for the evening.
“What made you build it out here?” she asks.
“We already had a small engineering team in the Valley,” I tell her.
“Once advanced systems started growing, it stopped making sense to keep forcing everything through New York.”
“So you built another center.”
“We expanded one.”
Sophie gives me a look over the rim of her beer.
“That sounds suspiciously like executive semantics.”
“It’s accurate.”
“Conveniently accurate.”
I almost smile.
She catches it.
Neither of us comments.
Sophie shifts in her chair and looks through the windows toward the rain.
“You like it here.”
It is not a question.
“I do.”
“You’re different here.”
I take another drink.
“You said something similar in Milan.”
Her gaze comes back to me.
“I remember.”
So do I.
Too much.
The room grows quieter as another roll of thunder moves across the campus. Sophie gets up to carry her empty plate toward the counter. I watch her before I can stop myself.
The black trousers she changed into after the tour fit close through her hips, and the soft cream top she is wearing follows the shape of her body in ways I have spent the past week deliberately refusing to notice.
Time has changed her without taking anything familiar away.
Her body is fuller than I remember, softer in some places, more defined in others, and the realization lands low enough that I tighten my hand around the bottle.
She reaches the counter, sets down the plate, and turns. I look away before she catches me staring.
Barely.
When she comes back, she brings another beer and sets it beside my hand. Our fingers brush and the contact lasts less than a second.
My body responds as if seven years have not happened.
Her fragrance reaches me when she steps past my chair, warm and clean and familiar enough to drag Lake Como through my head with brutal clarity.
I take a slow breath as she sits again.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome.”
The lights flicker overhead.
She glances up.
“That normal?”
“No.”
“Comforting.”
“The backup system will kick in if we lose power.”
“You say that like you’re waiting for it.”
“I built half the redundancy protocols.”
Sophie looks at me. “You personally?”
“I was involved.”
“That means yes.”
I take another drink. She smiles faintly. There is something dangerous about seeing that expression again.
Not because it is seductive.
Because I remember exactly what it feels like when she stops guarding herself around me.
The thought irritates me. So does the fact that I am sitting here remembering any of this at all.
I set the bottle down harder than necessary.
Sophie notices.
Her smile disappears.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t look like nothing.”
I lean back in the chair.
“You’re still interviewing me?”
“No. I’m asking why you look irritated.”
“I look irritated most of the time.”
“That is true.”
There it is again.
That easy recognition.
The kind that should not still exist.
I look toward the windows instead of her.
The rain strikes harder against the glass.
Sophie is quiet for a few seconds before she says, “For what it’s worth, this place is impressive.”
I glance back at her. “That sounded painful.”
“It was.”
“You’ll recover.”
“I usually do.”
Something in my chest tightens.
Seven years ago, I would have known what came next.
A sharper answer.
A smile.
Her foot brushing mine beneath the table because she wanted to see if I would react.
Now there is only distance and the knowledge of everything that happened after. I look at her across the table and feel the irritation return, stronger this time.
Not at the facility.
Not at the storm.
At her.
At myself.
At the fact that she can still sit three feet away from me and make every carefully buried memory feel recent.
Sophie studies my face.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like you’re angry.”
I hold her gaze.
“Maybe I am.”
Her expression changes slightly as she holds my gaze across the table.
“Then tell me,” she says.
The rain keeps battering the windows behind her, steady and hard enough to fill the space between us.
I set my beer down.
“Why didn’t you return my call?”
Her expression changes immediately.
Confusion, not guilt.
“What call?”
I study her face. “After the article.”
Sophie’s brows draw together.
“Julian, I never got a call from you.”
“I called.”
“I’m telling you I didn’t get it.”
“I emailed you too.”
She shakes her head slowly.
“I didn’t get that either.”
My irritation spikes.
“I sent it to your work address. It came back undeliverable.”
Sophie goes still.
Then she says, “Because I quit.”
The answer lands harder than I expect.
“You quit?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Right after everything blew up.”
I lean forward slightly. “Why?”
Her mouth tightens before she answers.
“Because I saw what they did with my notes.”
I say nothing.
Sophie continues, her voice more controlled now.
“That article wasn’t mine, Julian.”
I watch her carefully.
She leans back in the chair, but there is nothing relaxed about her posture.
“Grace pulled me off the story after the scandal started escalating,” Sophie says.
“Then Kate Hobbes used material from my reporting and turned it into something I never agreed to publish.”
My jaw locks.
Sophie keeps going before I can interrupt.
“I fought with Grace about it. I told her they couldn’t use my work that way. I told her what Kate wrote distorted what I had actually reported.”
“You expect me to believe you had nothing to do with it?”
Her eyes flash.
“I expect you to believe I’m telling you the truth.”
I stare at her.
Seven years of anger rises so fast that I can feel it in my chest.
“That story came out with details only a handful of people had.”
“Because they were in my notes.”
“Your notes.”
“Yes, Julian. My notes from an assignment I had been working for weeks.”
“You were inside my company.”
“I was doing my job.”
“You were inside my life.”
Her face tightens.
“That part wasn’t my job.”
The words cut through everything else.
I look away for a second, toward the rain streaking across the windows.
When I turn back, Sophie hasn’t moved.
“What happened after you quit?” I ask.
“I turned everything in.”
“What does everything mean?”
“My company phone. Laptop. Credentials. Email access. All of it.”
Something cold moves through me.
I remember the returned email.
I remember the failed text.
I remember sitting in my apartment staring at a message that never went through and deciding she had made herself unreachable because she wanted me to understand.
Sophie watches me.
“You really emailed me?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“That I needed to talk to you.”
Her eyes lower briefly.
I ask, “What about the phone?”
“That number belonged to The Ledger”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“I assumed you did.”
“I had your number. I didn’t exactly ask who paid the bill.”
Sophie looks down at the table.
Then she says, “I tried to call you too.”
I stop breathing for half a second.
“What?”
“I called Blackwell.”
“When?”
“More than once.”
My hand tightens around the edge of the table.
“Who did you speak to?”
“I don’t know every person. Assistants. Communications. Eventually Daniel.”
The name turns my stomach.
Sophie watches my reaction.
“He wouldn’t put me through,” she says.
I stare at her.
“Daniel knew you were calling?”
“He knew who I was.”
“What did he say?”
“That you weren’t available. That all outside communication was being restricted because of the investigation. He told me someone would contact me if necessary.”
I sit back slowly.
The room suddenly feels smaller.
“That was during the lockdown.”
“I know that now.”
I shake my head.
“You could have told him it was personal.”
“I did.”
That shuts me up.
Sophie’s expression changes, some of the anger giving way to something older.
“I told him I needed to speak with you directly,” she says.
“I told him it had nothing to do with the story.”
“What did he say?”
“That he couldn’t connect me.”
I drag a hand over my jaw.
For years, I have remembered that week as a series of closed doors with Sophie on the other side of every one of them.
Now she is sitting across from me telling me she had been knocking too.
“Why didn’t you try another way?” I ask.
Sophie’s eyes narrow. “I did.”
“After you left the Journal?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I called the office again. I tried the number I had for you.”
“That number was changed during the investigation.”
“I didn’t know that.”
I laugh once, but there is nothing funny about it.