A few nights later, Noah came to see me.
He didn’t come in smiling this time.
He looked like he hadn’t slept since the ambulance took him away.
He sat on my couch, hands locked together so tightly his knuckles had gone white, and placed a voice recorder on the coffee table between us.
“Listen first,” he said.
The recording clicked on.
At first it was just noise. Movement. Breathing.
Then Lila’s voice.
Sharp. Hysterical. Obsessed.
How she had engineered Ethan’s affair.
How she had wanted me gone.
How seeing me made her crazy.
How Ethan reminded her of Noah.
How even when she was with Ethan, the one she imagined was Noah.
My stomach twisted.
Then Noah stopped the recording.
He still didn’t look up.
Finally, in a voice so low I almost couldn’t hear it, he said, “Lila isn’t my real sister. We’re from a blended family.”
I said nothing.
He swallowed. Hard.
“When we were younger… she crossed lines. A lot. I told nobody.”
His next words nearly shattered me.
“The day I passed out at the station… when you said you were disgusted by me… I wasn’t just hurt. I was back there again.”
I stared at him.
At his trembling mouth. His lowered head. The shame he was trying so hard not to show me.
And all at once, pieces I didn’t even know I had been holding fell into place.
The panic in his eyes.
The way he’d collapsed.
The way he sometimes went rigid when touched unexpectedly.
I moved to the floor in front of him.
He flinched instinctively.
Then hated himself for flinching.
My chest hurt.
“Noah,” I said softly.
He shook his head fast. “I know what this sounds like. I know it’s ugly. But if this recording can prove she and Ethan stole your formula, then use it. I don’t care if people find out. I don’t care if they know what she did to me. If it helps you, I don’t care.”
I did.
I cared so much I could barely breathe.
Because now the evidence I needed was sitting right in front of me, and getting justice meant tearing open the darkest wound he’d ever carried.
“You’d really do that?” I asked.
He finally lifted his head.
His eyes were wet, but steady.
“For you? Anything.”
My heart slammed so hard it hurt.
I reached for him before I even fully understood why.
He came into my arms like he’d been waiting his whole life to be allowed there.
He was so big, taller than six feet, broad-shouldered now, but the way he held me in that moment felt heartbreakingly young.
“I don’t care about anything else,” he whispered into my shoulder. “I’m not scared of them. I’m only scared you’ll leave me.”
I tightened my arms around him.
“When this is over,” I said, “do you want to leave this city with me?”
He started crying harder.
Not pretty tears. Not cinematic tears. Full-body ones.
He nodded into my neck.
That night, we slept with the recorder on my nightstand and our fingers tangled together.
I whispered Ethan’s name once.
Then Lila’s.
This time, I wasn’t afraid of the fight coming.
I was hungry for it.
A few days later, I went to the hospital alone.
I picked a day Ethan wouldn’t be there.
Lila sat propped up in bed in a private room, face pale, one hand on the slight curve of her stomach.
When she saw me, all the sweetness vanished from her expression.
There it was.
The hatred.
The jealousy.
I sat down, crossed my legs, and brushed invisible dust from my skirt.
“You hinted to Ethan to steal the formula from my home office, didn’t you?”
She smiled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s talk about something you do understand.”
Her smile faltered.
“You hate me, don’t you? You hate that I’m talented. You hate that my life worked out. You hate that Noah loves me. And the funniest part? No matter how crazy you get, he still won’t even look at you.”
Her expression snapped.
“Shut up.”
I leaned forward. “Tell me, does he only answer your texts because you’re carrying another man’s baby?”
Her face turned crimson.
A glass shattered against the wall beside me.
I stood.
Perfect.
I had everything I needed.
That night Ethan called.
His voice was exhausted.
“Sophia,” he said softly. “Lila lost the baby.”
I rolled Noah off me with one hand and sat up in bed. He complained immediately and wrapped himself around my waist again.
“So?” I said into the phone.
Silence.
Then Ethan asked, “Can you stop provoking her?”
I laughed and hung up.