Chapter 7
Cracks in the Contract
By February, the lines between what was real and what was contractual had become impossible to find.
He remembered her sister's birthday without being reminded. She had started leaving him notes — nothing sentimental, just small things: a coffee shop she thought he'd like, an article she'd read that reminded her of a conversation they'd had. He kept them. She had seen the corner of one sticking out from inside his copy of Hemingway.
They had not kissed. They had not crossed any lines. But they existed in each other's orbit in a way that felt increasingly inevitable, like two stars caught in each other's gravity.
The problem was Daniel.
Or rather, the ghost of Daniel, who still sometimes appeared in Sophia's eyes when she thought no one was watching.
— ✦ —
He came back in March.
Sophia got the message on a Tuesday — Daniel was in New York, he'd heard about her father, he wanted to see her, he missed her, he'd made a mistake.
She stared at the message for a long time. Then she looked up and Ethan was standing in the doorway, jacket on, clearly just home from work. He read her face instantly.
"Who is it?" he asked.
She turned the phone over. "No one."
But he knew. She could see it in the slight stiffening of his shoulders, the careful neutrality that dropped over his features like a shutter.
"Sophia." His voice was quiet. "You don't have to explain anything to me."
"I know," she said. "I know."