The notebook had seventeen pages now.
I spread it across my bed on a Tuesday afternoon while Sienna was at Cole's and the dorm was quiet and the light through the window was the flat, grey kind that made everything look like evidence. Seventeen pages of dates, incidents, connections. Lines drawn between events that looked random until you laid them side by side and watched the architecture emerge.
Every public Naomi-and-Rhys moment followed by a crisis within forty-eight hours. Every crisis serving the same three purposes – destabilize the relationship, damage Rhys's reputation, position Caleb as the reliable alternative. Every escalation slightly bigger than the last, calibrated to the size of the stage. The pattern was undeniable. Consistent. Almost elegant in its precision.
But patte
