The missing hour

Chapter 2 Six years later

I stared at the photograph until the train's overhead light started to hurt my eyes.

It had to be fake. That was the only explanation that made any sense. Someone had taken a picture of a woman who looked like me and stitched it into a scene that never happened. People do that now. Software made it easy. I told myself this three times before I believed it even a little.

Then I looked closer.

The coat. I zoomed in on the photo until the pixels blurred, but there was no mistaking it — the deep burgundy wool, the double-breasted cut, the small tear near the left cuff that I'd never bothered to have mended. I still own that coat. It was hanging in my closet at home.

I zoomed in further, past my own laughing face, down to my wrist resting against Caius's arm. There, faint but unmistakable, was the thin white scar just below my palm. The one I'd had since I was a teenager. The one I never told people about because I didn't like explaining it.

My hands started to shake.

I told myself there had to be an explanation. A stolen photo of me somewhere, edited into someone else's memory. A coincidence with the scar. Anything.

By the time the train pulled back into the station — my stop had been the next one over, and I'd gotten off without even registering the decision — my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

Caius was standing near the entrance.

Waiting.

I don't know if I expected him to still be there, but the sight of him didn't surprise me. Somehow, it felt inevitable.

"Did you send this?" I held up my phone, screen facing him, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.

He glanced at it. Something moved behind his eyes — not surprise, not guilt. Something closer to sorrow.

"No."

"Then who did?"

"I don't know," he said. "But I know where it was taken."

I laughed, though nothing about this felt funny. "Of course you do."

"A hotel on Rue des Marronniers. Small place, third floor, the room faced the courtyard so you could hear the fountain at night." He said it evenly, like reciting an address he'd memorized a long time ago and never forgotten. "You hated the noise the first night. By the third, you said you couldn't sleep without it."

"I've never been to that hotel." My voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, and I hated that it did. "I've never been to Lyon. I would know."

"Would you?"

The question landed like a slap.

"Why do you keep lying to yourself?" he asked, quiet, no anger in it at all, which somehow made it worse.

"I'm not lying." I stepped back from him, putting distance between us like it might help. "I don't know what you want from me, or what kind of game this is, but I'm not the person in that photograph."

"You are." He said it simply, the way he said everything, like the truth didn't need to be raised to be believed. "You were twenty-two. You wore your hair longer then. You used to twist it around your finger when you were nervous, and you did it constantly that week, because you were terrified of what we were doing."

"What were we doing?" The words came out before I could stop them.

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, something in his voice had changed — softer, and heavier at the same time.

"We were in love."

I felt the air go out of the space between us.

"No," I said. "No, that's — we weren't. I would remember that. Nobody forgets something like that."

"You didn't forget," he said. "Someone made sure you couldn't remember."

"That's not possible."

"I know how it sounds."

"Do you?" My voice rose, sharp with something that felt like fear wearing the mask of anger. "Because it sounds insane. It sounds like a stranger cornering a woman at a train station and telling her they used to be in love, and expecting her to just — believe it. Just because you know what coat I own and where I got a scar when I was sixteen."

"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm asking you to stop pretending you don't feel it."

I opened my mouth to argue, and nothing came out, because he was right, and I hated that he was right.

"You used to fall asleep against my chest," he said, quieter now, almost gentle, like he was handling something fragile. "Every night in that room. You'd put your ear over my heartbeat, like you needed to hear it to fall asleep. I used to run my hand through your hair until you stopped shaking."

I don't know what happened at that moment. One second, I was standing on the platform, furious and frightened and certain this man was either delusional or dangerous. The next, something moved through me that wasn't a thought at all.

Rain against a window.

The steady thud of a heartbeat beneath my cheek.

A hand, warm and slow, moving through my hair.

It lasted less than a second. It felt longer than my entire life.

I gasped and stumbled back, one hand flying to my chest like I could physically hold myself together.

"What was that," I whispered, not really asking him. Asking myself.

Caius didn't move toward me. He just watched, his jaw tight, like it was taking everything in him not to close the distance between us.

"That," he said, "was what you remember."

I shook my head, over and over, like I could shake the feeling loose. "I need to go."

This time, he let me.

---

I didn't sleep well that night. I lay in bed replaying the platform, the photograph, the scar on my wrist that I'd never told a soul about, until exhaustion finally dragged me under sometime near two in the morning.

The dream came fast and sharp, more vivid than any dream I could remember having.

Rain. So much rain, coming down in sheets, soaking through everything. I was running, my lungs burning, my shoes slipping against wet stone. Ahead of me, Caius stood in the downpour, one hand pressed to his side. Blood, dark and spreading, seeping through his fingers.

"Caius!" My own voice, torn and desperate. "Run, Caius!"

He didn't move. He just looked at me the way he had at the station — like he'd been waiting, like he already knew how this ended.

I woke up gasping, my heart slamming against my ribs, the sheets twisted around my legs.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark of my bedroom. Another momen

t to convince myself it had only been a dream.

Then I looked down at my hand.

There was blood on my palm.