Page 133 of Cruel Lies

Then, when I'm composed, I go straight to my laptop.

Because I am not Old Cali. Old Cali would crawl into bed and cry into a pint of something. New Cali fights. So I sit down at the kitchen island, exactly where I built the worst spreadsheet of my life six weeks ago, and I open the company dashboard to see how bad it is.

Except I can't.

Authentication failed.

I type the password again. The same red error message pops up.Authentication failed.

I try the admin portal. The corporate filing service. The bank. The data infrastructure I begged and clawed to keep online, that Ronan cleared a forty-one-thousand-dollar invoice to save.

Access revoked. Please contact your account administrator.

Iamthe account administrator.

I try the fraud engine, but the login screen doesn't even argue with me. It just sits there, blank and polite, refusing to recognize the woman who made it.

I stare at the screen until the letters go soft and swimmy.

Here it comes. Not the cold, clean, flat deadness from the Phoenix hotel and not the fanged focus from the car line with Paula. This grief arrives all at once, a wave that drags me under without ever breaking. I fold in half over the counter and let out an inhuman wail.

It isn't the theft of the company that's killing me. Not entirely.

It's the napkin, worn soft at the corners from being handled by a wide-eyed optimist who thought,Maybe, maybe this could work.

It'sYou're beautiful, Calista Meadows,again and again, until I'd almost started to believe it.

It's the mirrors he stole so I couldn't make myself small.

It'sI've loved you since before I knew your name.

It's a man on his knees telling my daughter he'd do his best to stay forever.

It's pancakes and caterpillars and octopuses and dancing like we were the only two in the room.

It's the fact that all of that was a lie. A sad, cruel, nasty, vicious lie.

The heartbreak lasts about ninety seconds. It's the worst ninety seconds I have had since a scale three thousand miles away told me my life was a lie.

Then I sit up. I wipe my face with the heel of my hand.

And I open a fresh spreadsheet.

36

RONAN

Even after I issue the order, I don't move for a long time.

The towel is still around my waist. The steam behind me has thinned out to nothing. The window is black and full of my own reflection, and below it, the park is a hole in the middle of all the lights.

The phone is still in my hand. Navi hung up a while ago, or I hung up on him. I don't remember which. I set it down on the dresser and I pick up the napkin instead.

I turn it over in my fingers. The corners are soft. She handled it a lot. I can tell. She carried it in her bag and took it out and put it back and took it out again, and each time she did that, she was deciding whether to keep me.

That's what it was for. That's what I built it for. A little test she'd run.

Well, joke's on me, because she ran it. She got her answer.