“Emily. Please stay”
Ndie froze near the threshold, Jost for a second. Then she turned, awid the last reple of days
he straight, expression manī
g the hom I’d been trying to
the said nothing as the last person slipped out behind her and the eased closed again, waling in
do
in
I stayed where I was, hands braced on the table, eyes fixed on the wood grain. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her yet. “You were right,” I said quietly “About everything “I was met with silence so I glanced up
Emily stood with her arms loosely folded, the folder still clutched against her chest. She looked calm. But I saw a flash of hesitation.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “You didn’t just prove your innocence. You built a better case than half my advisors could have. You didn’t panic, and you didn’t wait for someone to rescue you.”
Still nothing. She was giving me the kind of silence that didn’t come from lack of words–but from too many unspoken ones “I should have seen it sooner,” I added. “I should’ve known Iris was capable of something like this.”
Emily’s mouth lifted–just slightly. Not quite a smile.
“Should have,” she echoed “But you didn’t.”
That landed harder than I expected. Not because she said it with any kind of venom–but because she didn’t.
There was no anger in her voice. Just a tired truth.
“I didn’t want to believe you would do something like that,” I said stepping around the table slowly, “but I didn’t want to look like a fool if you had.”
Her eyes flicked up, sharp. “So you picked the safer option and disregarded anything you knew about me.”
The words were like a blade–precise and bloodless. She didn’t raise her voice, but she didn’t need to.
“I picked wrong.” I said.
She nodded once. Not to agree–but to accept. Somehow that was worse.
“I didn’t ask for this role, Logan,” she said, quiet and level “You brought me here. You put me beside you, in front of the press,
in front of the Pack, and then when people started pointing fingers, you didn’t even defend me.”
I was trying to protect you,” I said before I could stop myself.
That earned me a real reaction–her eyes widened slightly, incredulous.
“By letting them doubt me?”
“No,” I said, jaw tight. “By staying impartial. And not pulling you in deeper if it was true.‘
She laughed, bitter and low. “And if it wasn’t?”
I had no answer. The silence folded in again.
Emily stepped forward then, slow and deliberate. She placed the folder on the table in front of me, tapping it once.
“You have everything you need now,” she said. “That’s what matters, right?”
She turned to go. My hand shot out before I could think, fingers closing lightly around her wrist.
She stilled.
Chapter 57
+25 BONUS
“I don’t care about the file,” I said, voice low.“I care thust your stay, 1. When you had every reason not to
She didn’t look at ine
“I stayed because I’m not the kind of person who runs or rolls over just because it gets hard and people are potholes,” she said.
Then she gently pulled her hand free. And I let her.
But as she walked toward the door, I realized something I hadn’t seen clearly until now not when she brought me the folder, not when she took down tris, not even when she stood silent whild) hesitated to belleve her
1 had broken something. Deeply
Whatever trust she’d started to build in me whatever silver of bel of she’d been murturing I’d crushed it beneath my doubt
I’d asked her to stand beside me.
And then I left her alone in the fire.
