Page 24 of Oliver
“I know people, Oliver. It’s my job,” she said, firm and full of infuriatingly audacious conviction. “And after talking to Emmet, I’m telling you he can handle it.”
I laughed, bitter and sharp.
“Thirty minutes, and you think you know him better than I do?” I shook my head. “He was just a kid. Two weeks from turning eighteen when I got him out of Norman.Two weeks,Zahra, and I spent every minute of them praying to a God I’d denounced over two decades ago that our parents wouldn’t report it as a kidnapping. That was the first and last time I begged the universe for anything. And I got lucky. They let him go. But don’t ever think I’d risk that again.” I stopped to suck in air, filling my burning lungs with much needed oxygen. “This isn’t about what you believe. It’s about the facts. And the fact is that I won’t bring Emmet withina hundred milesof the people who tried to bury him under mountains of shame.” I took a step closer to her. “And the facts are outlined very clearly in our contract.”
"Facts," she repeated. "Like whatever facts you might have shared when you were sick?"
The air between us suddenly felt too thin. There it was—the confirmation that something had happened, something I couldn't remember.Vacuum decay, my mind supplied unhelpfully.The potential rapid expansion of a quantum vacuum bubble with a lower energy state, capable of destroying the entire universe.
"I was delirious," I said, struggling to keep my voice even. "Whatever I might have said didn’t mean anything.”
Zahra let out a sound between a snort and a snarl before looking up, a hint of hostility in her gaze.
“You’re right.” Her voice was flat, void of the emotions raging in her eyes. “It clearly didn’t mean a thing.”
But it clearly did. The uncertainty hung between us, expanding like the space between galaxies—invisible but inexorable.
“I apologize if I said anything offensive,” I offered, hoping it would placate her, put whatever words mucked the air between is to rest. “I truly don’t remember.”
"You had a high fever," she said, her voice carefully neutral. "It's normal not to remember."
But there was something in her tone, something that suggested I'd said things worth remembering. The uncertainty gnawed at me. What fragments of my carefully guarded thoughts had escaped while I was delirious?
I picked my bag up. "It's getting late. You have an early flight."
Zahra held my gaze for a long moment, then looked away. "You're right. We should call it a night."
As Zahra walked me to the door, there was a moment—brief but undeniable—when I wanted to stay. To explain. To tell her about the house, about my parents' betrayal, about the real reason I needed to return to Norman.
But I couldn't risk it. Not when I was so close to finally reclaiming what had been stolen from Emmet and me.
“Don’t forget the texting schedule,” she said as I walked out the door.
I shot her a look, and she cracked a smile.
“Right. You’re Oliver Beck.” She leaned on the door, her gaze pointed, full of truths that haunted my temporal lobe like apparitions, dissolving into smoke whenever I tried to grasp at them. “You remember everything.”
The irony wasn't lost on me. The one time my perfect memory failed was the one time I needed it most—to know exactly what secrets I'd surrendered in my fever-induced vulnerability.
I turned away without responding, her words following me down the hallway, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. For the first time in my life, I was terrified of what I couldn't remember.
My fingers instinctively reached for the watch on my wrist, adjusting it with scientific precision.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Each second ticking by was a reminder that some variables—like whatever I'd revealed to Zahra—were now permanently beyond my control.
Eight
OLIVER
I checkedmy phone for the eighth time in fifteen minutes, the screen mocking me with its darkness. No messages. No notifications. Nothing.
"Dude, your phone is going to spontaneously combust if you keep staring at it like that," Tobias said, sliding a beer across the table toward me.
