Tessa stares at the folder like it might burn her.
“They’re trying to bury it again,” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
Her hands tremble.
“I can’t go through that again…”
I step closer.
Steady.
“You won’t.”
She looks at me.
Fear still there.
But something else now too.
Fight.
“They think I’ll take it,” she says.
My gaze hardens.
“Then let’s prove them wrong.”
21
Tessa
The shop is quiet again.
But this time…
It isn’t heavy.
It isn’t suffocating.
It’s still.
Like the storm passed just long enough to breathe.
I stand behind the counter, staring at the folder the lawyer left.
I haven’t touched it.
Don’t want to.
Because I already know what it is.
An easy way out.
And for the first time in seven years—
I don’t want easy.
