Page 68 of You Owe Me

Seconds stretch. My watch ticks once. Twice.

And then, finally, she leans back, slowly, like every muscle in her body is braced for recoil.

“I’m not the only one who’s been off lately, but you already know that, don’t you?”

Her voice is calm.

Too calm.

That’s how I know what’s coming isn’t small.

I narrow my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She tilts her head. “It means if we’re calling in favors for the truth now, I’ve got a stack of unpaid ones I’ve been sitting on.”

I stare at her.

Hard.

And for once, she doesn’t flinch.

“You disappear,” she continues. “For hours. No explanation. Your heart monitor goes off and you brush it off with some bullshit joke about stress. You come home looking like you’ve been put through a paper shredder and expect me not to ask questions?”

“You do ask.”

She lets out a sharp breath of a laugh—mocking and exhausted at the same time. “Right. And you give me nothing. Every single time.”

I say nothing.

Because she’s not wrong.

“You want me to spill?” she snaps. “Fine. But don’t act like you’re owed transparency when you’ve never given it to me. You ask for the truth, Mav, but you don’t offer it. You collect secrets like IOUs and cash them in when it suits you, and I’m supposed to just… hand mine over?”

Her voice is rising now, not loud, but sharp—every word honed like glass.

“I’m not the one who wakes up at three in the morning, gasping for breath. I’m not the one clutching their chest in the kitchen when they think no one’s watching. I’m not the one lying through my teeth every time someone says, ‘Are you okay?’”

I swallow hard.

But she’s not done.

“You think I don’t notice? I notice everything. The meds in the bathroom cabinet that weren’t there two months ago. The way you stopped drinking coffee. The fact that you start pulling away right when I’m getting close enough to see whatever it is you’re trying so damn hard to hide.”

Her eyes are glassy now, but not soft. They’re furious.

She stands and slowly steps forward.

“You want to talk about running? You’re sprinting. You just do it in a tailored shirt, with your jaw clenched so tight no one calls it what it is.”

I grip the edge of the table. Fingertips white. Pulse climbing.

“And the worst part?” Her voice cracks. “You make me feel guilty for holding things back when you’ve been lying by omission for weeks.”

Silence falls again.

It’s deafening this time.

She’s shaking slightly—whether from rage or fear or heartbreak, I can’t tell. But she stands tall anyway. She doesn’t back down.

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