Iseeherfacechange.
That’s it. That’s all it takes.
One second — her eyes dropping to the screen, something moving across her face before she locks it down — and my whole body knows before my head catches up.
Griffin’s number.
I don’t need her to say it. I know.
My jaw locks so hard I feel it in my teeth.
I say goodnight. I leave.
Get three blocks away and turn the car around because fuck that. Fuck driving home wondering. Fuck giving that asshole room for shit.
I buzz her doorbell.
She lets me in.
She’s still holding the phone when she opens the door.
“You came back.”
“Yeah.”
“Why.”
I shut the door behind me. “Because you looked at your phone like you just took a puck to the face.”
That lands.
She steps back, but not all the way. Holds the space between us.
The space looks like her even in the dark— notebooks everywhere, camera bag by the door, the bowl out back for that dumb cat that still won’t come inside, like she has any idea what’s good for her. It smells like coffee and onions from the pasta we ate earlier.
“The text,” Nova says.
“I saw your face.”
“Jax—”
“I don’t need to know the whole story.” I hold her eyes. “I just needed to come back.”
Not to fix it.
Just so she wasn’t standing here alone with it.
She holds my gaze for a long time.
Then: “Griffin.”
Just the name. Flat. Like she’s tired of carrying it.
Something kicks hard in my chest. I keep it there. Barely.
“We dated. Six weeks. He’s a narcissistic fuck. It was nothing until it wasn’t, and then I got out.” She says it like she wants the whole thing gone. “He does this. Shows up when he thinks something’s happening. When he thinks he might be losing something he decided was his.”
I’m no stranger to fuckers like him.
