The note was folded in half, slipped under my door with the careful precision of someone who had done it before.

I almost missed it. I was coming in late from my second shift, keys already in hand, mind already on the cold coffee I'd left on the counter that morning. My foot caught the edge of the paper and I looked down, and something in my chest went very still before I'd even read a word.

The handwriting was the same. I would have known it anywhere — the way the letters leaned slightly left, like they were reaching for something just out of frame. Three lines. No signature. The kind of message that didn't need one.

*I've been watching you work so hard. You look tired, Vivienne. You shouldn't have to carry all of this alone.*

I stood in the doorway for a long time.

Then I went inside, locked the deadbolt, put the chain on, and set the note on my desk. I smoothed it flat. I read it twice more, which was two times more than I should have. Then I folded it and put it in the back of my notebook, behind the ledger pages, where it couldn't be seen from the outside.

I told myself it was nothing. A test. Someone trying to rattle a door to see if it would open.

I straightened my pen. Aligned it with the edge of the notebook. Moved the coffee mug two inches to the left until it sat exactly centered on its ring stain. Adjusted the stack of papers. Adjusted them again.

I did not call anyone.

I especially did not call Fletcher.

---

The town car was there when I left for work the next morning. Black, sleek, idling at the curb with the patient permanence of something that had been placed rather than parked. The man behind the wheel had the build of someone who had been hired specifically for situations that required a build like that.

I stood on the sidewalk for a full five seconds.

Then I called Fletcher.

He answered before the second ring. "Good morning."

"There is a car outside my building."

"There are many cars outside many buildings. It's a city."

"Fletcher."

A pause — not the pause of someone caught, but the pause of someone deciding how much to explain. "Street parking is public. I'm not aware of any ordinance that prevents a vehicle from — "

"The driver has been here since at least six a.m. He nodded at me. He *nodded*, Fletcher, like we have an arrangement."

"You do have an arrangement. You owe me a significant sum of money, which makes you, technically, a financial asset. I protect my assets."

The heat that moved through me was not the productive kind. "Remove it."

"No." His voice dropped a register — not louder, just lower, the tone he used when the conversation was over and he was simply waiting for me to realize it. "The car stays. The driver's name is Marcus. He's discreet and he won't interfere with your day. You won't notice him after a week."

"I will notice him every single — "

"Vivienne." A beat. "Let me have this one."

The line went quiet. I stood on the sidewalk with my phone pressed to my ear and the morning cold against my face, and I thought about the note folded into the back of my notebook, and I hated him a little for making it complicated.

"Fine," I said, and hung up before he could hear anything else in my voice.

---

Edison chose the worst possible moment, which was the only moment Edison ever chose.

The bullpen was at full capacity — twelve desks, eleven people with their eyes up, the particular attentiveness of an open-plan office that has sensed incoming entertainment. He came around the partition with the easy confidence of a man who had never once been told no in a way that stuck, and he leaned against my desk and said, loudly enough for the room: "The Hargrove Gala is Friday. Tell me you don't have plans."

I opened my mouth.

The glass boardroom door opened.

Fletcher didn't rush. He never rushed. He came across the floor with his jacket buttoned and his expression arranged into something that was technically neutral and functionally arctic, and he stopped beside my desk and looked at Edison the way you look at a footnote you're deciding whether to bother reading.

"Torres." He said it like he'd already filed the name somewhere unimportant. "The Henderson deck has a formatting error on slide nine. I'd address that before Friday."

Edison blinked. "I — sure, I can — "

"Now would be ideal." Fletcher's eyes moved to me, briefly, with an expression that said *this is handled* in a language I hadn't agreed to speak. "Miss Dunn, the quarterly review."

Edison left. The bullpen exhaled.

I stood up, smiled at no one in particular, and walked Fletcher into the empty hallway by the copy room with my hand around his arm and my grip firm enough to make a point.

"You cannot do that," I said, the moment the door swung shut behind us.

"I addressed a formatting error."

"You addressed Edison like he was a problem you were disposing of."

"He was asking you to a gala." The quiet in his voice had an edge now, fine and controlled. "In front of the entire floor."

"That is not your business."

"No." He looked at me steadily. "It isn't."

The hallway was narrow. The copy machine hummed between us like a third party trying to stay neutral. His jaw was set and his eyes were doing the thing they did when he was saying one thing and meaning something else entirely, and I was close enough to see the exact moment he decided not to say it.

"Fletcher — "

"Go finish your report, Vivienne." He straightened his cufflink. Once. "I have a meeting."

He walked back through the door, and I stood in the hallway alone, and the copy machine kept humming, and I pressed my palm flat against the wall and breathed until the current running through my chest settled into something I could carry.

The bonfire was Patrice's idea. A Maplecreek tradition, she said, the kind of wholesome community event that made the town what it was. I stood at the edge of the gathering, watching the flames paint the night in gold and shadow, and I thought about the last bonfire I'd been to. It had been with him, junior year, when we'd driven to the lake and talked until the embers went cold.

Fletcher materialized beside me with a wool blanket draped over his arm, his expression carefully neutral. 'You look cold,' he said, not looking at me.

'The fire is literally thirty feet away,' I said.

He unfolded the blanket and held it out. 'It's a town tradition. Apparently, we're supposed to share.'

I wanted to argue, but the wind had picked up, and my coat was not as warm as I'd pretended it was. I took one edge of the blanket, and he took the other, and suddenly we were standing close enough that I could smell his cologne — the same one he'd worn three years ago, before everything fell apart.

'You used to laugh at my jokes,' he said quietly. The words were so unexpected that I turned to look at him. The firelight caught the edge of his profile, and for a moment he looked like the Fletcher from before — the one who'd made dark comments about the food at mixers and waited for me to get them.

'I still have a sense of humor,' I said.

'No.' He shook his head. 'You have a defense mechanism.'

The blanket shifted between us. His hand was six inches from mine, and I could feel the heat radiating from his skin. 'I miss her,' he said.

'Fletcher—'

His phone rang.

The moment shattered. He pulled it out, and I watched his expression go cold as he read the caller ID. 'I need to take this.' He stepped away, the blanket slipping from his shoulders.

I watched him walk into the darkness, his phone pressed to his ear, and I wondered what his father could possibly have to say that was worth breaking whatever had just started to mend between us.

The drive back to the city was different. The rain started small — a mist that blurred the headlights — but by the time we hit the mountain pass, it had become a proper storm. The wipers fought a losing battle against the downpour, and the road ahead was a gray haze.

'You're taking the long way,' I said, watching the familiar curves of the scenic route unfold through the windshield. It was the road we used to take on weekends, the one that wound through the valley and made the drive feel like an adventure.

'I thought you might want to see it,' Fletcher said, his hands tight on the wheel. 'Before it's gone.'

Something in his tone made me turn. 'Gone?'

'They're developing the land next year. Progress.' The bitterness in his voice was sharp enough to cut.

The car hit a rough patch of road, and I grabbed the door handle. 'Maybe we should turn around. This isn't safe.'

'You always did hate this part of the drive,' he said, but he slowed down. 'Hold on.'

The rockfall appeared out of nowhere — a small avalanche of stones and mud that spilled across the road ahead. Fletcher stopped the car and leaned forward, studying the damage.

'I need to check it,' he said. 'Stay here.'

He stepped out into the rain, and I watched him walk toward the edge of the road. The wind was howling now, driving the rain in sheets, and I could barely see him through the storm.

Then I saw it.

A crack in the cliff face. A tremor in the ground. The first few stones falling faster than they should.

'Fletcher!' I screamed.

He turned, and I saw the moment he understood. But he was too far from the car, and the landslide was coming too fast.

I threw myself out of the passenger seat and ran. The rain was ice-cold against my skin, but I barely felt it. I ran toward him, toward the wall of mud and rock that was roaring down the cliff, and I tackled him to the ground.

My body hit his. I wrapped myself around him, shielding his back with mine. He tried to turn, to push me away, but I held on.

'Vivienne, no—'

The debris hit.

Pain exploded across my shoulder and back. I heard Fletcher scream my name, and then everything went dark.