CHAPTER 6: THE SPLINTER

A stranger handed me the truth I’d spent sixteen years pretending I didn’t need.

I didn’t call Ethan that day. I drove home with his words sitting right there beside me, pressing against my ribs like something alive and restless. My hands stayed steady on the wheel, but my heart was pounding in my throat.

The phone stayed buried deep in my bag. Curiosity kept tugging at me, sharp and way too familiar, but I knew better. Fresh pain always made me reach for the wrong things.

So I left it untouched. Windows down, the radio turned up loud enough to drown out the screaming in my chest.

The next day I threw myself into work like it might actually save me. Morning consultations, afternoon vendor walkthroughs, contracts piled high, every single line had to be perfect before Friday.

I moved through it all with that sharp focus I was known for, telling myself I wasn’t thinking about Ethan Cross, or those sixteen years, or the way his voice had lowered when he said, “things that would change the shape of what you think happened.”

But I thought about it with every single breath. It sat there in my chest like a splinter. Tiny, almost invisible, but every wrong move sent a fresh sting right through me.

---

Wednesday evening the memory hit me out of nowhere while I was cooking.

One second the onions were sizzling in the pan, filling the kitchen with their sharp, sweet smell. The next I was twenty again, three weeks after Sebastian had said “I love you” so casually in his kitchen, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Everything between us had suddenly felt warmer, heavier… scarier in how permanent it seemed.

He started showing up unannounced. Not in a creepy way. Just… there. Sitting on the steps outside my building with his laptop and a coffee, like it was the most natural place for him to be. The first time I asked what he was doing, he looked up at me with those soft, sure eyes.

“I wanted to be where you were.”

Simple. No games. Like choosing me was the easiest decision he’d ever made. Like I was worth rearranging his whole world for.

I’d stood there frozen on the pavement, heart stumbling, staring at this powerful man who had the city at his feet, sitting on my plain concrete steps because being close to me mattered more than anything else that day.

The thought hit me hard, “People don’t do this. People don’t just choose you so plainly, so completely.”

Then the even quieter, scarier one followed, “Maybe they do. Maybe I just never believed I could be someone worth choosing like that.”

I burned the onions black.

Present-day me quickly killed the heat, scraped the mess into the sink, and tried to shove the memory away. My eyes stung. No one was there to see the way my hands shook just a little as I gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles turning white.

---

Jade called at eight-fifteen. She always picked that exact time, when Isla would be busy and I’d be left alone with my thoughts. I answered on the second ring, my throat tight.

“Talk,” she said. No hello. Just that straight-to-the-point, warmth from a sister who’d watched me hide behind walls for years.

“Hey, Jade.”

“Naomi.” Her voice softened, but I could still hear the gentle push. “Three days. I’ve been sitting on this. What happened?”

I leaned against the counter, fingers digging into the edge until the stone pressed painfully into my skin. “I took the Hale Industries contract.”

“I know. You told me two weeks ago.”

“Sebastian was in the first meeting.”

The line went quiet. Then came a slow, heavy sigh. “Of course he was.” Another pause, longer this time. “And?”

“And nothing,” I said, way too fast. “I stayed professional. Did my job.”

“Naomi.” She said my name like she was cupping my face in her hands. Gentle, but not letting me slip away. “How are “you”? Not how you’re handling it. Not the safe version you always give me.”

I swallowed hard. Jade had always seen through the cracks I tried so carefully to hide. I gave her the facts in neat, careful order. The meeting, Victor’s entrance, Claire waiting outside, Ethan stopping me in the corridor. My voice stayed steady, almost too calm.

I didn’t tell her about the burned onions or how my chest had tightened when Sebastian said my name at the end of that first meeting, like some old wound had quietly whispered, “Still here.”

The parts that still hurt, I kept locked away. Jade listened in that heavy silence that told me she felt every single thing I wasn’t saying.

“This Ethan,” she said finally, her voice low and careful, like she knew she was walking on thin ice. “You’re going to call him, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t decided.”

She let out a soft sound. Half sigh, half sad little laugh. “You’ve already decided. You’re just waiting until it doesn’t feel like stepping into traffic.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had softened into something that ached. “Call him, Naomi. You can’t keep running from shadows you won’t even look at. That’s what tore us apart last time… and I’m scared it’s happening again.”

She was right. The truth burned worse than those onions ever could.

---

We hung up at nine-thirty. I washed the dishes on autopilot, checked emails through blurry eyes, and was just reaching for the vendor files when the front door clicked open.

Isla walked in, bag slung over one shoulder, coat slipping halfway off. She had that restless, wired energy of someone who’d been holding onto something painful the whole ride home and finally couldn’t carry it by herself anymore.

She didn’t say a word. Just set her phone down on the kitchen table. The screen showed an old magazine article from four years ago. A business profile. Right in the center was a crisp photo of a man in a dark suit at some event. Sharp jaw, dark hair, eyes staring straight into the lens.

Grey eyes.

Isla wasn’t looking at the phone. She was looking straight at me. Those same grey eyes I’d seen across the breakfast table for sixteen years were now staring back at me from the screen.

My whole carefully built world tilted slowly under my feet, quiet and final. It felt like the floor had dropped away, and I was still trying to pretend I could stand.

I had always known this moment would come someday.

I just hadn’t known it would feel like my heart was splitting wide open, raw and bleeding, with nowhere left to hide… and no way to stop whatever came next.