Chapter 6

"That's a lie."

The words came out of me before I even finished reading the screen. Verane did not answer right away, and that silence hurt more than anything Celeste could have said.

"You don't believe me."

"I want to." Her voice was careful, each word placed like she was walking across ice. "But I've believed you before, Ransford. I believed you a hundred times."

"Two weeks ago I was sitting in this shop learning how to read a torque spec I used to know in my sleep. I was not on a boat. I was not anywhere near a bottle." I could hear my own voice climbing and forced it back down. "Ask Drew. Ask anyone here. I have not missed a single shift."

"Celeste says it happened the night before you came here. Before anyone here would have seen you."

The math landed in my stomach like a dropped engine block. The one night that had no witness. The one night I had been alone in my apartment with a legal pad and a phone that would not stop buzzing.

"I dumped every bottle in my apartment that night," I said slowly. "I remember every hour of it because I could not sleep. I texted you. Look at the timestamps. I was awake at four in the morning making a list of jobs to apply for. People who are using don't sit at a kitchen table writing job applications for six hours straight."

Verane's eyes flicked to her phone, to the message thread between us, the one that still had my four a.m. text sitting in it, plain and unedited. I'm coming to the shop tomorrow. Timestamped. Undeniable.

"That doesn't prove anything," she said, but some of the certainty had drained out of her voice.

"It proves I was in my apartment, awake, coherent, at an hour nobody fakes for show. If I'd been using, I wouldn't have been building sentences that made sense. I know what that night looks like on me. This isn't it."

She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the thread like it might rearrange itself into a different answer.

"There's one way to be sure," I said. "A test. Today. Right now if you want. Whatever Isabella needs, whatever kind holds up in court. I'll take it in front of you if that's what it takes."

Something shifted in her face. Not trust exactly. Something closer to relief at being handed proof instead of having to choose between believing me and protecting herself.

"I'll call Isabella," she said. "If it's clean, she can use it to challenge Celeste's credibility instead of just my case."

"And if Celeste is lying about the date because someone paid her to lie about the date," I said, "then it's not just her word against mine anymore. It's proof someone is shaping what she says."

Verane's jaw tightened. "Then let's make sure he's wrong."

The testing clinic was thirty minutes away, and neither of us spoke much on the drive, the silence thick with everything we weren't saying. I watched the city go by out the window and thought about how strange it was, sitting in a car with the woman I had married, driving toward a building that would either save what little I had left or confirm every terrible thing she already believed about me.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, eyes on the road.

"Anything."

"Why didn't you fight harder for a drink that night? You said yourself you couldn't sleep. You were alone. Nobody would have known."

I thought about it honestly before answering, because she deserved honesty more than she deserved comfort.

"I thought about it," I admitted. "Around two in the morning I stood in front of the liquor cabinet at the corner store two blocks from my building. I stood there long enough that the guy behind the counter asked if I needed help finding something."

Verane's hands tightened on the wheel. "What did you say?"

"I told him I already found what I was looking for. And then I left without buying anything." I looked out the window so I would not have to watch her reaction. "I'm not going to pretend it was easy, Verane. It wasn't some clean moment where I suddenly became a better man. I wanted it. I still want it some nights. I just wanted Mira more."

She did not say anything for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice had lost its edge completely.

"That's the first true thing you've said to me in two years that didn't sound like an apology."

"It wasn't supposed to be one."

"I know." She glanced at me, quick, like she was allowing herself something she usually did not. "That's why it landed."

The clinic was clinical and fast, the kind of place that had seen every version of this exact situation a thousand times before. I gave what they needed and sat in a waiting room chair that had clearly outlived several decades of bad news delivered to strangers, Verane beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touched and neither of us moved away.

"Whatever this says," she said quietly, staring straight ahead, "I need you to understand something."

"Okay."

"I'm not scared of you failing because I think you're a bad person, Ransford. I know you're not. I'm scared because I already rebuilt a whole life believing I'd never have to feel this exact kind of hope again. And hope is the most dangerous thing you've ever handed me."

I wanted to reach for her hand. I did not, because I was not sure yet if I had earned the right to.

The nurse called my name twenty minutes later. I stood, my legs unsteady in a way they had not been since the last time I strapped into a car going two hundred miles an hour, and walked toward the small office where the results were waiting.

Verane stayed in her seat, watching me go, her hands folded so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone pale.

The door closed behind me. Through the frosted glass I could see her outline, still and small, waiting for a number that would decide more than just this one afternoon.

My phone buzzed in my pocket before the nurse even opened the folder. I glanced down out of habit.

It was a text from an unknown number, no name attached, sent thirty seconds ago.

You should have stayed gone, Ransford. Everyone you love is safer when you disappear.