CHAPTER EIGHT
308 Words
The man in the chair didn’t speak at first.
He only looked at Leah. Not Henry—her.
Like he recognized something in her face, something that made his lips tremble before he turned away.
Henry noticed. Leah saw it in the subtle shift of his weight, the way his hand brushed the edge of the chair.
“What did you see?” Henry asked the man.
The man’s voice cracked. “She… she was there.”
Leah froze.
The air in the room seemed to thicken, pressing against her ribs.
Henry didn’t turn to her, didn’t give her an out. “When?”
“Years ago,” the man whispered. “Same eyes. Same—”
The rest was cut short. Henry’s hand closed around the man’s jaw, firm but not violent. “That’s enough.”
When he finally looked at Leah, his expression wasn’t cold—it was calm. Too calm.
“We’re leaving,” he said.
She followed, though her legs felt like lead. The night outside was thick with fog, curling under the streetlights as if trying to hide what had just happened.
Henry opened the car door for her. “You didn’t tell me you’d been here before.”
“I haven’t,” she said quickly.
The door shut with a dull finality. He slid into the driver’s seat, starting the engine without looking at her.
“People lie for two reasons,” he said quietly. “Fear… or guilt.”
She turned to him, ready to snap back, but his hand landed gently over hers on the seat between them.
“Which one is yours, Leah?”
The car moved through the city, yet she felt more trapped than she ever had in that windowless room.
And for the first time, she wondered if meeting Henry had been a coincidence at all.
- Writer
