I read the message four times.
Each time it says the same thing.
There is something you need to know about Derek that nobody has told you yet and it changes everything.
I sit up in the dark with the phone in my hands and I think about Vivienne, calculating precise Vivienne who has not made a single unstrategic move in four years, sending me four raw unpolished sentences at three in the morning with no lawyer cc'd and no angle visible.
Either this is her most sophisticated manipulation yet, or she is genuinely done.
I slide out of bed carefully. Rhys shifts but does not wake. I pull on his shirt from the floor, the one that has apparently become my default garment in this apartment, and I go to the living room and sit in the dark and I type back.
Me: Say what you need to
