Page 88 of The Silent Hour

I capped my pen, the click of it echoing in the tense quiet between us. "That's supposed to be helpful?"

"No." Eric’s gaze didn’t waver. "Helpful would be if your wife were here right now instead of me."

My eyes lifted from the file, meeting his. The overhead light caught the faint smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

"Touched a nerve?" he asked.

"My wife isn't relevant to this conversation." I could feel the muscle in my jaw twitch.

"She's relevant to every conversation you're not having with her."

The pen dropped from my fingers, rolling across the file before clattering to a stop against my keyboard. I stared at Eric, and he stared back, unblinking, the way he did when he knew he'd hit something I'd been deliberately sidestepping.

Things between my wife and I hadn't been the same since I'd told her about Lila. Not broken—she'd been clear about that, painfully, admirably clear—but changed. It lived in the small spaces. The way she paused before kissing me goodnight, and the way she'd started sleeping closer to her edge of the bed, the sheets tucked between us like a boundary neither of us had drawn but both of us felt.

She still made dinner. She still laughed at my jokes and pressed her palm flat against my chest when I came home late, feeling my heartbeat the way she always had, as if confirming I was still alive. But the warmth behind it had thinned, like a veil had been pulled between the woman I'd married and the woman who had to absorb the fact that her husband had been an idiot.

I'd run through the excuses so many times they'd worn smooth: exhaustion, stress, the disorienting shock of her mouth landing on mine without warning. All true. None of them explained why I'd kissed her back.

Eric was still watching me, patient in the way that made him dangerous.

"She's fine," I said. The lie tasted stale even as it left my mouth.

"She's not fine. She's Julia. There's a difference. You two haven't gone this long without checking since the twins were born. You've been wound tighter than a nun's ass since we went and saw Cortez, and you haven't blinked in about forty-five seconds."

I stared at him flatly. "Beautifully phrased."

"Thank you."

"Don’t you think you might be overstepping?"

"I'm your oldest and dearest friend. Overstepping is in my job description."

"You're my PA, Eric"

"In addition too, you mean, and with an extremely flexible scope of employment."

He held my gaze until I broke it, turning back to the disordered spread of paper on my desk. "Julia and I are handling our marriage."

"I know."

"And whatever happened with Lila isn't happening again."

"I know that too."

Now I glanced at him. "Then shut the fuck up."

He grinned, slow and unrepentant

BY THE TIME I LEFT the courthouse the following afternoon, some of the edge I'd been carrying had dulled. Court had gone my way. Everything I'd asked for had been granted. One less case bleeding time from my desk. One less problem competing with Cortez for oxygen.

Eric had disappeared in search of his ninth dose of caffeine, swearing the courthouse machines were a personal affront to both coffee and humanity. The moment Judge Zunbarr's courtroom doors closed behind me, I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through missed messages.

The man treated his courtroom like a sacred temple. God forbid a screen lit up during proceedings. I was halfway through my notifications when a familiar scent reached me. Jasmine. My attention lifted automatically. Lila approached from the opposite direction with a few manila folders tucked against her chest. Likely the test cases Eric suggested we float her to see if she could be trusted.

I could have crafted a reason to terminate her, but until we knew what exactly this connection with Cortez was and how deep it went, we needed eyes on her and the information she’d accessed.

Her steps wavered the moment she spotted me. She wore a tailored charcoal-gray suit, the wool catching the overhead lights, and today her dark hair spilled free over her shoulders instead of being pinned back.