25. Vera
I stand outside Sloane’s apartment building with two bags of bagels, a carrier of coffee, and a weight behind my ribs I’ve been carrying since midnight.
It’s eight AM. The earliest I could reasonably show up without it being suspicious.
Twelve hours since Kane told me about the phone call. Twelve hours of me staring at her unread texts.
She needed me and I wasn’t there.
I press the buzzer.
“Hello?” Sloane’s voice, scratchy with sleep.
“It’s me. I brought bagels and apologies.”
A pause. Then the door buzzes open.
Her apartment is on the third floor. I take the stairs. I need the extra seconds. Need to remember who I am when I walk through her door. Who I’ve always been to her.
The door opens before I can knock.
Sloane’s in pajama pants and an oversized sweatshirt, hair in a messy bun, mascara smudged under her eyes like she cried herself to sleep. The sight of it punches the air from my lungs.
“Hey.” No warmth. Just acknowledgment.
“Hey.” I hold up the bags. “Peace offering?”
She steps aside to let me in.
I set everything on her kitchen counter. She takes the coffee cup.
“Thanks.”
Not effusive. Not warm. Just thanks.
We settle into our usual spots on the couch, me on the left, her on the right, the throw blanket we’ve shared a thousand times spread across our laps.
She tells me about the client. Three months of work.
Revision after revision. The email that came yesterday: We’ve decided to go in a different direction.
“It’s not even that they fired me,” she says, picking at her bagel. “It’s that they wasted three months of my life.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.” She stares at her coffee. “And when it happened, all I wanted was to call you.” A pause. “But you weren’t there.”
“I should have answered. I’m sorry, Sloane.”
“Where were you?”
“Working on the new Whitfield proposal from home.” I press my palm flat against my thigh under the throw blanket, where she can’t see it. “Had my phone on silent. Didn’t see your calls until this morning.”
She looks at me. Not the easy look of someone who believes what they’re hearing — something slower than that. Her eyes track my face the way she tracks a brief she doesn’t quite trust, moving through it, checking it against something she’s been suspecting. Her hand stills around her coffee cup.
The moment stretches one beat too long.
Then she blinks. Sets her cup down. And I watch her decide — visibly, consciously — to let it go.
“Okay,” she says.
We eat in silence for a moment. The bagels are good. The coffee is perfect. But then.
“Lately it feels like you’re not here. Even when you’re sitting right next to me.”
The words settle somewhere behind my sternum. Not sharp. Heavier than sharp — the weight of being accurately named by someone who loves you.
“I’m not angry.” She looks up. “I just miss you.” Her voice drops on the last three words, loses the careful steadiness she came in with.
“You’ve changed since Gerald came along.
You’re somewhere else most of the time. You won’t tell me anything real about him.
” A pause. “Your relationship with him doesn’t feel like privacy. It feels like hiding.”
My hands are wrapped around my coffee cup. I don’t say anything.
There’s nothing to say that isn’t the truth.
“You know what would cheer me up?” Sloane says, reaching for more cream cheese.
“What?”
“A good Sinclair-Beckett Smackdown.” She’s smiling slightly now. “It’s been so quiet lately. No dishwasher wars. No stories about Kane mansplaining load-bearing walls. Nothing.”
“It’s because we haven’t seen each other much.”
“I should just invite him over,” she says, already brightening at the idea. “Sit back with my coffee and watch you two go at it. Honestly, it would be deeply restorative.”
“We don’t perform on command, Sloane.”
She laughs. “You absolutely do. You’ve been verbally sparring since the day you met. It’s part of who you are together.” A pause, the smile settling into something more thoughtful. “Which is why it’s a little weird that it’s gone quiet. That’s not distance. You two could argue through a wall.”
“Maybe people change.”
Something in my voice makes her look at me more carefully.
“Vera.” Her head tilts. “You’re not about to tell me you have a crush on my brother, are you?”
The bagel turns to sawdust in my mouth.
“What?”
“Okay, okay!” She laughs. “I’m kidding. Jesus, you should see your face.”
I force a laugh. Hollow. Brittle.
She sobers, picking at her bagel. “I just — what you two have is good, you know? In its own chaotic way. Nine years of arguments and neither of you has actually killed the other. That’s something.
” She looks up. “You’re one of the few people who doesn’t let him get away with anything.
He needs that. And you—“ She pauses. “You need someone who pushes back. He does that. It works because it’s safe. Because it’s just— you two being you two.
I’d rather keep that exactly as it is than watch it turn into something that ends badly and takes both of you from me. ”
The coffee cup becomes numb between my hands.
“I know what happens when people I love date each other,” she says, quieter now. “I’ve watched it go wrong before. And I can’t—“ She stops. “I just can’t lose both of you.”
“What do you mean?”
Sloane looks at her coffee cup for a long moment.
“Remember Sidney? My friend from high school? I said the friendship ended but didn’t say why.”
Oh god.
“Yeah,” I manage.
She traces the rim of her mug. “When we were teenagers we were best friends. Like you-and-me level close. Did everything together. Knew each other’s secrets.” A pause. “Until she developed a crush on Kane.”
My chest goes tight.
“He was seventeen. She was sixteen and pretty and interested.” Sloane’s voice is careful. Measured. Like she’s handled these pieces so many times she knows exactly where the sharp edges are. “They hooked up at a party. Started dating officially. Lasted about four months.”
“What happened?”
“Everything got complicated. When they were together, Sidney couldn’t come over without it being about Kane.
Everything was about him or them or whatever they were arguing about that week.
” Each word lands clean and precise. “When they broke up, it got worse. She was devastated. Couldn’t separate me from him.
Couldn’t look at me without thinking about him. ”
“That’s awful.”
“We tried to stay friends. Really tried. But it never went back to how it was before.” Sloane’s jaw tightens. “Too much damage. Eventually we stopped talking. And I lost my best friend.”
The silence is suffocating.
“I was furious with Kane for a long time. He knew how much Sidney meant to me and he did it anyway. Didn’t stop to think that when things went wrong, and they always do, I’d be the one left holding the pieces.
” She looks at me directly. Her eyes clear and certain.
“That whole thing taught me something I’ve never forgotten.
The people you love shouldn’t date each other.
It never ends well. Someone always gets hurt. ”
I can’t breathe.
“So yeah.” She forces a smile. Reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I’ll take the Sinclair-Beckett Smackdown any day. At least when you two are fighting, I still have both of you.”
My phone buzzes.
Gerald: How’s it going?
“Gerald?” Sloane asks.
I nod. Can’t speak.
“Go ahead and answer. I don’t want to keep you.”
“No.” I put the phone face-down. “You’re not keeping me.”
We talk for another half hour. Easier conversation. Work gossip. Weekend plans. Safe topics. But Sloane’s voice runs underneath all of it: Someone always gets hurt. At least I still have both of you.
When I leave, she pulls me into a long hug at the door.
“Love you, weirdo.”
“Love you too.” I hold on a second too long.
“Now go.” She laughs softly. “Text him back. You’ve been heroically ignoring your phone.”
“Call me if you need anything. Day or night.”
“I will,” she says with a genuine smile.
I close the door behind me.
Stand in her hallway, back against the wall, breathing hard.
She told me. She looked me in the eye and handed me the exact blueprint of how this will destroy her, and I sat there lying, and now I’m standing in her hallway knowing that every single day we wait is another day I’m doing to her what Sidney did.
One more day she trusts me while I don’t deserve it.
I make it to my car before the tears start.
Gerald: How did it go?
I stare at the screen. Then I type.
Me: Not good.
Three dots appear immediately.
Gerald: I’m home. Come over.
He’s waiting when the elevator opens into his penthouse. One look at my face, red-eyed, jaw tight, and he steps back to let me in.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Sidney?”
He goes still. “What?”
“Sidney.” I set my bag down. Don’t move further into the room. “Your sister’s best friend. The one you dated when you were seventeen. The one she lost because of it.” I watch his face. “Why didn’t you tell me that story existed?”
His expression shifts. “How do you—”
“Sloane told me.” I cross my arms. “All of it. The hook-up, the four months, the friendship falling apart afterward. How furious she was with you.” I hold his gaze. “Is that why you’ve been stalling? Is it because on some level you already know you’re doing it again?”
“Vera—”
“Because it would make a lot of sense, Kane. It would actually explain why you’re hesitant to tell her about us.”
“Sidney was a long time ago.” His voice comes out sharp. “I was seventeen. I was a teenager, Vera.” He looks at me. Something working in his jaw. “I didn’t understand what it cost Sloane at the time. I should have. But I didn’t.”
“Well.” My voice goes quieter. “She hasn’t forgotten.”
I watch his face as I say the next part.
“She said it was the thing that taught her the people you love shouldn’t date each other. That it never ends well. That someone always gets hurt.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. Small. Gone before I can name it.
“She said she lost her best friend and she was furious at you for a long time.”
“And then she squeezed my hand.” My throat tightens. “And told me that at least when you and me are fighting, she still has both of us.”
I have to stop. Look down. Then back up.
“We’ve already taken that away from her. She doesn’t know it yet.”
His hands, resting on the counter, have gone very still.
Then he crosses to me — not quick, each step deliberate — and frames my face with both hands. His thumbs find my cheekbones.
I feel my eyes go wet. I don’t let it spill.
“What if she can’t forgive us, Kane?”
His hands don’t move. His eyes don’t either.
“That’s her choice to make.” His thumbs stroke, slow. “But she can’t make it until she knows the truth. We don’t get to decide what Sloane does with the truth. We only get to decide whether we give it to her.”
Something settles in my chest. Heavy and permanent, the weight of a thing that can’t be undone.
I close my eyes.
“Kane.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
“What if—”
“I don’t know what she’s going to do. I don’t know if she’ll forgive us. I don’t know how long it takes or what it looks like on the other side.” His forehead drops to mine. “But I’m not doing this without you.”
I breathe him in. Feel his hands steady on my face.
“Okay,” I whisper.
He pulls me against him, and I hold on.
We stand like that in his living room. Just two people holding each other at the edge of something that can’t be undone.
“Stay today,” he says into my hair. “Not for a scene. Just to be a normal couple before everything changes.”
I pull back to look at him. “We’re a normal couple?”
He nods.
“Okay. Then tell me. What do normal couples do?”
“I don’t know. Order lunch from somewhere bad for us. Argue about what to watch. I’ll probably say something architectural and you’ll make fun of me.”
“That does sound suspiciously like us.”
“Yeah.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “Turns out we’re easier than I thought.”
I look at him for a long moment. The man who knew I was wearing black before I’d even chosen it. Who drove across town in the rain with a specific coffee order he’d memorized six months before he had any reason to remember it.
“Okay,” I say softly. “One normal day.”
His smile is small and real and slightly heartbroken around the edges.
So is mine.
We spent the afternoon as promised. Lunch from a Thai place Kane claims is too greasy, but he eats three portions of it.
We have an argument about a documentary that ends in a draw, his hand finding mine on the couch without ceremony, my feet tucked under his thigh like I’ve been doing it for years.
I notice things I haven’t let myself notice before. The way he laughs at something on screen — quiet, private, not performed for anyone. The weight of his hand over mine. Small things. The kind that accumulate without permission and are hard to give back.
At some point I fall asleep against his shoulder. When I wake the light has shifted and he’s still there, reading something on his phone.
“Hey,” I murmur.
“Hey.” He sets the phone down. “Good sleep?”
“Don’t tell me I snored.”
“You didn’t snore.”
“You’re lying.”
His lips twitch. “It was endearing.”
I sit up. Look at him in the late afternoon light. The man that knows how to take me apart and how to put me back together.
“I should go home,” I say. “I have work in the morning.”
He nods and doesn’t argue. At the elevator he cups my face and kisses me, soft and slightly desperate under the surface.
When he pulls back his eyes are serious.
“Sunday,” he says.
“Sunday,” I say back.
He nods, then releases me and steps back.
I step into the elevator and turn to face him as the doors close.
He’s watching me. Still. The doors close between us and the lobby indicator clicks on. I lean against the back wall and close my eyes.