Sleep didn't come easily that night.
I lay awake replaying Derek's interview, Bianca's warning, the unknown number's message glowing in my mind long after I'd turned my phone face down. Somewhere in the tangle of it, one thought kept surfacing clearer than the rest: Sawyer had stayed. Through all of it, every complication, he hadn't once stepped back.
He called the next morning before I'd even made coffee.
"Can I come by tonight?" he asked. "I want to tell you the rest. All of it. No more pieces."
"You don't have to," I said, though something in me wanted him to.
"I want to," he said. "I think I've been protecting myself more than protecting you, and I'm done doing that."
*****
He arrived that evening with takeout neither of us reall
