POV: Yessica | Location: Edinburgh
She reached for it.
Lewis's second message. One forty-three in the morning, the Edinburgh dark full and complete outside her window, the flat holding the particular silence of two sleeping children and one woman who had told herself she was done for the night and was demonstrably not done.
She read it.
I'm not asking you to forget what I was. I already know you won't. I'm asking whether who I am now is someone worth knowing. Those are different questions. You don't have to answer tonight.
She set the phone face-down on the nightstand.
She lay in the dark with her hands flat on the duvet and thought about the specific cruelty of a man who had learned, finally, exactly how to say the right thing.
She didn't reply.
Not at one forty-three, not at two,
