Chapter 19
NORA
"Maybe," Marcus said.
He didn't say anything else for a second. Just a beat too long, a pause that stretched slightly past what a normal conversation needed, the kind of silence a person leaves when they're deciding whether to push further or let something go.
I felt it land somewhere cold in my chest.
I remembered Marcus differently now than I had even a few weeks ago. I remembered him as steady, careful, the friend who always seemed to know exactly what to say and exactly when to show up, the angel outside a hotel room door on the worst morning of my first life. I had spent eight years grateful for a man I was only now beginning to understand might have been watching me far more closely, and for far longer, than simple friendship required.
This pause told me someth
