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I saw. I’m sorry. Can I come over?

Hank stared at the screen. Read it again. Read it a third time because his eyes were blurring, and he needed to be sure.

His hands were shaking when he typed back.

Please.

CHAPTER 15

The rain had started around six.

Chad stood on the sidewalk outside BJ’s, watching water streak down the front windows and trying to remember how to be a person who went to work. The neon signs bled pink and blue onto the wet pavement. Inside, he could see Blake behind the bar, competent, fine, not wondering why Chad was standing out here like a ghost haunting his own life.

You can do this. Six hours. You’ve worked sick, you’ve worked hungover, you’ve worked the day after Jonathan. This is just a shift.

He pushed through the door.

The warmth hit him first, then the music—some forgettable remix at half volume—then the smell of beer and lemon cleaner and something fried. Maybe twenty customers scattered around the room, which was generous for a rainy Monday. Nobody looked up when he entered.

Small mercies.

“Hey.” Blake straightened from where he’d been hunched over his phone. “Wasn’t sure you were coming in.”

“Makes two of us.”

Chad ducked behind the bar, grabbed his apron, and started the muscle-memory routine: check the wells, check the ice, check the garnishes. His hands knew what to do. The rest of him was still standing on the sidewalk in the rain.

He’d worked twice in the past nine days. Called in sick the rest. Tim hadn’t pushed, which was either kindness or the hope that the news cycle would move on before Chad became a liability. Most of the regulars had the decency not to mention the photograph. A few had offered awkward condolences, as if someone had died. One guy—a semi-regular Chad had always found slightly creepy—had asked for his autograph.

He hadn’t seen or heard messages from Hank since Friday. That was intentional. Chad had stopped answering calls, stopped reading texts, stopped doing anything that might weaken his resolve. He was protecting Hank. That’s what he told himself every time he reached for his phone and then pulled back.

The silence was the kindest thing he could offer.

It was also killing him.

“You good?” Blake was watching him with the careful expression people used around the recently bereaved.

“Fantastic.”

“Because if you need to⁠—”

“I’m good, Blake.”

Blake held up his hands and retreated to his phone. The kid had learned when to stop talking. Chad appreciated that about him.

The next hour passed in the gray space where time went when you weren’t really living in it. Chad mixed drinks, made change, said the right things at the right moments. A few regulars clocked him with that look—I know, but I’m not going to mention it—and he nodded back in the silent agreement of people pretending everything was normal.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.

It buzzed again.

He pulled it out, expecting spam or a bill notification, and found three texts from Ricky in all caps:

CHAD

TURN ON THE TV

ANY TV RIGHT NOW