6. Cloe
CLOE
I locked the bathroom door and sat down on the toilet lid like my legs couldn’t hold me anymore.
Not to pee.
Not to fix my makeup.
Just to breathe.
The fluorescent lights above buzzed like they were judging me. The tile was too white—too sterile, too clean. The scent of bleach and hand soap burned the back of my throat. Nothing in this room held memory.
Except me.
I was the ghost in the room.
The folder in my lap trembled between my hands. My fingers dug into the edges, bending the paper. I didn’t even remember what was in it—contracts, maybe. Invoices. HR paperwork I’d been told to deliver.
None of it mattered now.
What mattered was Wolfe’s voice still echoing in my head.
Camille was the only good thing in this family.
And me ?
I was the leftover.
The disappointment.
The wrong girl in the right girl’s clothes.
The mistake who dared to wear her scent.
I curled forward, pressing my head against the side of the stall. Cold metal met my forehead. I didn’t flinch.
My chest ached.
But no tears came.
I wanted to cry.
God, I wanted to cry.
But I’d already cried her dry.
I’d already bled all over the memory of her and still couldn’t scrub the guilt out of my skin.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the photo.
It was folded in thirds. Soft at the corners. Nearly worn to fabric. I smoothed it open with care, like the paper might tear if I breathed too hard.
Me and Camille.
Her arm slung around my shoulder. Both of us in heels. Laughter. The glow of some overpriced restaurant behind us.
That night, she’d taken me somewhere I couldn’t afford. Walked in like the world belonged to her. Ordered champagne like it was sparkling water. Passed her plate across the table when she saw how slowly I picked at mine.
I’m stuffed, babe. Help me out.
She was always “stuffed” when I was hungry.
She pushed her credit card into the checkbook without glancing at the total. Talked about nothing for the next ten minutes so I wouldn’t say thank you.
And when we left, she handed me a shopping bag with a new jacket, heels, and a dress that hugged my hips like it had been tailored .
“Not my style,” she said, like she hadn’t picked it for me six weeks earlier.
She knew I had nothing.
And she never made me say it.
I clutched the photo until my knuckles ached.
She’d been everything.
And now she was gone.
And I was here.
Drowning in her memory. Her clothes. Her world.
The bathroom door creaked open.
I stiffened.
Two steps. Rubber soles against tile.
Then silence.
I held my breath.
Shoes stopped just outside the stall.
No movement.
No sound.
Just… presence.
Like someone was listening.
Waiting.
My heart thudded against my ribs. Loud. Too loud.
I blinked at the door, willing it to stay closed. Willing whoever stood there to walk away.
They didn’t.
Not for a long moment.
Then—
One step back.
The door opened again.
Footsteps receded.
And they were gone.
But the echo stayed.
In the space between my shoulders.
In the chill of the air .
In the way my fingers tightened around the photograph like it could shield me from whoever—or whatever—had been there.
I didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
I stayed there for a long time after that.
Because out there, I was a burden.
A stain.
A reminder of something they’d buried.
But in here?
I was just a girl on a toilet lid.
Trying not to fall apart.
I didn’t mean to walk that way.
I didn’t even realize where I was going until the hallway narrowed and the background chatter of the office floor faded behind me, swallowed by silence and glass. The air shifted. Cooler. Stiller. A corridor that didn’t breathe the way the rest of the building did.
Most of the upper-level offices were reserved for investors. Private meetings. People who had power and names carved into brass plaques.
But this wing?
No one came down this wing.
Not anymore.
The lighting was different here. Dimmer. The scent in the air was older—dust and carpet cleaner and something floral buried beneath layers of time.
I walked slower.
As if my feet knew what was coming before I did.
Then I saw it.
Second door on the right.
Frosted glass.
Bronze plaque.
C. Lawlor .
I stopped.
Everything inside me did.
I hadn’t seen it since the funeral. Since the day Barron locked it and told the staff, “No one goes in. No one touches anything.”
And no one had.
Not even to remove her name.
Not even to reclaim the square footage.
I stepped closer.
Raised my hand.
Touched the edge of the plaque. My fingers trembled as they brushed the raised gold lettering. A little dull now. Faded at the corners.
Camille always hated this office. Said it was too quiet. Too far from the chaos. “You can’t flirt with a printer, babe,” she used to say. “But you can with Royal’s assistant.”
And yet—this space was hers.
Still was.
I didn’t try the handle. I already knew.
But my hand moved on its own, reaching for the keypad.
Beep. Red.
Still coded. Still sealed.
Of course.
I stepped closer and leaned my forehead gently against the frosted glass.
Not enough to see through.
Just enough to feel like I could.
The hum of air conditioning vibrated through the wall. Faint. Constant.
I wondered if the light inside still flickered. If the scarf she used to throw over her chair was still there. If her heels still sat tucked beneath the desk.
I closed my eyes .
And everything in me hurt.
The begging.
The lipstick.
The shame I kept swallowing with my coffee.
It all started here.
At this door.
This name.
This ghost I couldn’t outrun.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I whispered.
My breath fogged the glass.
“But it’s the only place that still feels like you.”
I didn’t cry.
Not here.
Not where the walls still remembered her better than they’d ever know me.
I didn’t go back to my desk.
Didn’t check the message Loyal sent asking if I was okay.
Didn’t wait for another task. Another look. Another slice.
I just walked away.
Down the stairs.
Through the lobby.
Out the front doors.
And into the rain.
It started soft.
Light pinpricks against my skin.
But it didn’t stay that way.
By the time I hit the crosswalk, it had deepened into a slow, deliberate soak.
The kind of rain that feels personal.
I didn’t run.
Didn’t open my umbrella.
Didn’t care if people stared at the girl in the soaked blouse and twisted skirt .
Let the rain cling to me.
Let it seep through my fabric and into my skin.
Let it wash everything off that bathroom mirror hadn’t.
The cemetery wasn’t far.
Fifteen blocks from the Lawlor tower.
I couldn’t afford a cab.
Didn’t want one.
My heels ached. Every step a blister. My toes numb. The wind kept catching the hem of my skirt and yanking it up like the world hadn’t humiliated me enough.
Still, I walked.
Past shuttered cafés. Umbrellaed businessmen. Past women in dry coats and dry lives.
I walked until the sidewalk ended.
And the cemetery gates appeared.
Tall.
Iron.
Black as grief.
I’d only been here once since the funeral.
Couldn’t bear to come back.
Not until now.
But my feet knew the path.
Fourth row from the magnolia tree. Left side. Between a florist’s daughter and a retired judge.
Her grave was clean.
Someone had been here recently.
A pale pink lily lay across the stone. No note. Just rain collecting in the curve of the petals.
Camille would have hated that. She liked dramatic florals. Stargazer lilies. Red roses. Orchid sprays.
Not subtle.
Never subtle.
I stepped closer .
My knees gave out before I expected them to.
I sank onto the wet grass, the mud seeping through my tights. My hands curled in my lap. The rain matted my curls to my cheeks.
And I whispered.
“I miss you.”
The wind carried my words.
I didn’t expect her to answer.
I just needed her to know.
The thought tightened my throat.
I crouched down, wiped the droplets from her name.
Camille Rose Lawlor.
Beloved daughter. Fierce friend. Bright light.
Twenty-six years old.
I sat in the wet grass and let the cold soak through me. I didn’t care anymore. My knees were already ruined. The stockings shredded from the walk. My palms scraped raw from the fall that brought me back here in the first place.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the photo again. The one I couldn’t stop folding and unfolding like it held the answer I couldn’t speak aloud. I smoothed it open with trembling fingers and laid it down on the marble beside her name.
It looked small there.
Fragile.
Just like us.
“I tried, Cam.”
My voice cracked. Broke.
“I really did. I tried to stay away. Tried to be strong. Tried to live like you told me to—like I had a place in the world without you.”
The rain fell harder.
Thicker now. Like it had finally given up pretending it would pass.
“But I don’t.”
A tear fell. I let it. Didn’t bother wiping it away. My cheeks were soaked anyway.
“I’m in the building you built. Sitting in a chair that doesn’t belong to me. Wearing a shirt I can’t afford. Pretending not to hear your brothers call me a whore with their eyes.”
I paused. Swallowed hard.
“They hate me. You know that, right?”
A gust of wind lifted the edge of the photo. I pressed it flat again.
“They think I left you. And maybe I did. Maybe I should’ve gone out that night. Maybe it should’ve been me.”
A shiver ran through me. Deep. Violent.
“But I’m here now,” I whispered. “And I don’t know if it’s to make things right or to make them worse. I don’t even know if I want to be saved.”
My eyes closed.
“I just… miss you.”
I pressed my hand to the headstone. Rain sliding down my arm, soaking into the sleeve that had already clung to my skin for hours.
“I miss you so fucking much.”
The silence wrapped around me like a cloak. Heavy. Sacred.
Until—
Behind me, the crunch of boots on gravel.
I froze.
My whole body stilled.
The air shifted. Thickened. Pushed against my back like a warning.
And when I turned?—
Wolfe was there.
Rain slicked down his face. His jacket soaked through. His jaw tight. His hands clenched at his sides like he was holding something in.
But his eyes?—
They weren’t soft.
They weren’t grieving.
They were burning.
My breath caught.
His presence always felt sharp. Precise. But here, in this place, under this sky, it felt brutal.
I stood slowly. Wiped the rain from my cheeks. Not because I cared about appearances—but because I didn’t want him to see how much I’d already fallen apart.
“You followed me,” I said. My voice sounded too small. Too exposed.
“No.” His tone was clipped. Cold. “You’re predictable.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
I looked down at Camille’s name. Then back at him.
“I didn’t come here to bother you.”
“Didn’t you?”
His boots shifted. Two slow steps forward. Gravel crunched under his weight.
“This place isn’t yours, Cloe,” he said. “Not anymore.”
My jaw locked. “She was my best friend.”
“She was our sister.”
I nodded, rain dripping off my chin. “And she loved me.”
His mouth twisted. “She loved a lot of things. Didn’t stop her from dying alone.”
I flinched.
He didn’t.
“Don’t you dare blame me for that.”
“I don’t have to. You already do.”
Silence again. Sharp and painful.
I looked away .
Stared at the stone.
“I told her, no, I begged her not to go out that night,” I whispered.
“And she did anyway.” Wolfe’s voice dropped, lower now—dangerous, hollowed out by something deeper. “She trusted you to be there.”
“I was sick.”
“No,” he said. “You were scared.”
The word hit like a strike across the ribs.
I froze.
The rain pounded harder between us. Around us. Soaking everything. But it wasn’t the cold that made me shiver.
It was him.
He stepped closer.
Not fast.
Not threatening.
But heavy.
Intentional.
Close enough that I felt the heat of his fury under all that wet. Like it couldn’t be dampened. Couldn’t be cooled. It just burned beneath the surface, licking up the edges of his control.
“You think I don’t know what this is?” he rasped. “You think I don’t see the game you’re playing?”
I shook my head. “I’m not playing?—”
“You come back here wearing her perfume. Her curls. Her fucking smile. You crawl into our building like a parasite and act like grief gives you a keycard to our lives.”
My stomach twisted.
“I didn’t come for them. I came for me.”
“No,” he hissed. “You came for her. And now you’re tearing the last piece of her apart.”
Then he did it.
He shoved me .
Not hard.
Not cruel.
But too much.
The kind of push that wasn’t meant to land.
But did.
My back hit the gravestone with a wet, hollow thud.
Cold marble bit into my spine.
My breath caught.
Rain slid down my cheeks.
The photo slipped from my hands.
It fluttered to the ground between us, already curling at the corners.
He saw it.
Wolfe looked down.
At Camille’s laughing face.
At mine beside her.
Happy.
Untouched.
Before .
His eyes changed.
Not softened.
Broken.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
His hands opened and closed at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them.
He stepped back.
One pace.
Two.
The distance didn’t help.
He looked at me like I’d stabbed him.
Like he’d just realized what he’d done.
Where we were.
Who we were.
I didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
Not with my spine pressed to Camille’s name.
Not with his guilt soaking the air like a second storm.
Then he turned.
Walked off into the rain.
No goodbye.
No apology.
Just silence.
Just the sound of his boots scraping the gravel.
And me?—
Left there.
Pressed to her grave.
Alone.
Again.