Chapter Twenty-Four: The Truth Between the Lines
1419 Words
Cole
Harper sent me another screenshot at six fourteen the next morning.
I was already awake.
Sleep had become something that happened in brief, useless pieces. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Gavin’s hand slipping from the broken floor.
The message on Harper’s screen was short.
**He never told you she knew.**
I stared at it until the words blurred.
Then I called her.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“What?”
Her voice was thick with sleep.
“You received this now?”
“No. I scheduled it for dawn because I thought you’d enjoy starting your day annoyed.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“When did it arrive?”
“A few minutes ago.”
“Did you respond?”
“You told me not to.”
That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
“Good.”
“Don’t sound so proud. I’m capable of following instructions.”
“When it suits you.”
Silence.
I heard sheets moving on the other end.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She knew. Natalie knew about me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That is literally what the message says.”
“It says *she*. It could mean anyone.”
Harper released a frustrated breath.
“Who else would it mean?”
“I’m not guessing based on an anonymous text.”
“You’ve never had a problem guessing the worst about me.”
There it was.
Every conversation with her eventually became a fight.
Maybe because fighting was easier than admitting I didn’t have answers.
“I’ll meet you after my shift,” I said.
“Why?”
“To see the messages properly.”
“You already read them.”
“I want the dates, the photographs, and anything else you didn’t show me.”
“You think I’m hiding something?”
“I think Gavin taught everyone around him to reveal only what was convenient.”
The line went quiet.
I regretted it immediately.
Not because it wasn’t true.
Because she had probably spent the night reaching the same conclusion.
“Fine,” she said. “Where?”
“Not your apartment.”
“Scared I’ll corrupt you?”
“I’m trying to have one conversation without looking at his toothbrush.”
She didn’t answer.
I closed my eyes.
“Harper—”
“Seven o’clock. The diner near the station.”
She hung up.
---
At seven, she was already sitting in a booth beside the window.
Her hair was pulled into a loose knot, and shadows darkened the skin beneath her eyes. A coffee sat untouched in front of her.
I slid into the opposite seat.
“You look worse than yesterday,” I said.
Her expression flattened.
“That must be your version of hello.”
“I meant you haven’t slept.”
“Neither have you.”
I almost asked how she knew.
Then I remembered the bruises, the bandage, and the fact that grief looked the same on almost everyone.
Harper placed her phone on the table.
“All the messages are there.”
I scrolled through them slowly.
The first photograph had been sent the night she came to the firehouse.
Gavin with Natalie and the children.
Then the kitchen photograph.
The messages accusing him of lying to both women.
The silent call after his death.
Now this.
“He never told you she knew.”
The sender wasn’t threatening Harper.
Not directly.
They were exposing Gavin.
Piece by piece.
“Who knew where you were the night of the first photograph?” I asked.
“Gavin.”
“Anyone else?”
“You.”
“I didn’t have your number.”
“You said that already.”
“And you still suspected me.”
“You hated me.”
“I still don’t like you.”
She looked at me across the table.
“Thank you for clarifying.”
The waitress approached.
Harper ordered another coffee. I asked for one I wouldn’t drink.
When we were alone again, I tapped the photograph of Gavin’s family.
“This looks like it came from someone’s phone.”
“Obviously.”
“I mean it isn’t from social media. The angle is wrong. Someone took it at the birthday party.”
“Family?”
“Maybe.”
“Or Natalie.”
I pushed the phone back toward her.
“You need to stop accusing her without evidence.”
“She had evidence about me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Cole, someone photographed Gavin holding her in their kitchen. That isn’t a picture a stranger could take.”
I looked at it again.
She was right.
The photograph was close. Personal. Taken from inside the house.
“One of the kids could have taken it,” I said.
“And sent it to me?”
“No.”
“Then someone accessed it.”
“Maybe.”
Harper wrapped both hands around her coffee when it arrived.
“She knew there was another woman.”
“Gavin told me she suspected.”
“And you believed him?”
The question irritated me because it was fair.
“I believed he had convinced her it was over.”
Her fingers tightened around the cup.
“Was it?”
“What?”
“Did he tell you he ended things with me?”
I remembered the arguments.
Gavin saying he was handling it.
Gavin promising it was almost finished.
Gavin asking me to mind my own business.
“He said he would.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
The answer came harder than I intended.
“He never told me it had ended.”
Harper looked down.
A tear struck the surface of her coffee before she turned her face away.
I should have felt vindicated.
She had known he was married. She had stayed after learning about the children. Nothing about that had changed.
But watching someone discover they had been lied to after the liar was dead felt less like justice than cruelty.
“He kept telling me six weeks,” she said.
I said nothing.
“He showed me an apartment. An application with my name on it. A storage unit he said held the things he was moving out.”
Her laugh broke.
“There were Christmas decorations inside.”
I looked toward the window.
People passed outside carrying groceries and coffee, living ordinary mornings that didn’t contain dead friends or secret lovers.
“He could make anything sound real,” I said.
Harper looked at me.
It was the first time I had admitted it aloud.
Not that Gavin had made mistakes.
Not that his marriage had been complicated.
That he lied well.
“Did he lie to you too?” she asked.
The image of Gavin hanging below the broken floor entered my mind.
*The kids.*
His final unfinished sentence.
Whatever else he had lied about, he had died saving me.
“I don’t know anymore.”
Harper studied my face, but she didn’t push.
Her phone vibrated between us.
We both looked down.
Another message.
**Ask Cole what Gavin promised Natalie the night before he died.**
Harper lifted her gaze.
“What did he promise her?”
My stomach tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“You were fighting with him.”
“That doesn’t mean he told me everything.”
“What were you fighting about?”
I should have refused to answer.
Instead, I remembered Gavin standing in the bay, telling me he had everything under control.
“He said Natalie believed he was staying.”
Harper went completely still.
I continued before I could stop myself.
“He told her the affair was over.”
The color left her face.
“When?”
“Two days before he died.”
She stood so quickly that the table shook.
“Harper.”
“Don’t.”
She grabbed her purse.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
The words escaped without thought.
She stopped.
So did I.
For the first time since meeting her, I had said them without accusation.
Not *you should have known.*
Not *you chose not to know.*
Simply the truth.
She hadn’t known that.
Harper looked at me as though she didn’t understand what had changed.
Neither did I.
Then she walked out of the diner, leaving her coffee untouched and Gavin’s lies sitting between us.
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