Good.
Before heading home, he said, “I just want you to be careful. Marcus might have ulterior motives.”
“So do a lot of people.”
“Me included?”
I looked at him and smiled.
“Especially people who ask questions.”
He laughed, but the sound never reached his eyes.
That night, Adrian came home early. He walked into the study without knocking.
“You met with Vivian?”
“She came to see me.”
“What did you talk about?”
I closed my laptop.
“A lot of things.”
“Like what?”
I looked at him.
“Do you want to test me too?”
Adrian fell silent.
I stood, walked past him, then stopped at the door.
“Don’t worry. I’m not keeping any secrets.”
I didn’t turn around as I added silently:
Not yet.
I was growing closer to Vivian.
At least, that was what she thought.
I invited her to lunch, texted her in the mornings, and listened to her stories without interrupting. I asked about her work, her family, and the plans she never told anyone else about.
Vivian liked the attention.
People like her didn’t need much to feel loved. All it took was someone who listened as if every word she said mattered.
“I’ve always felt invisible,” she said one afternoon.
We were sitting in a quiet restaurant, far from the places where we usually met.
“Invisible to whom?” I asked.
“Everyone.”
She smiled, but it was a fragile smile. “At the university, you were always the one who stood out the most. Everyone wanted to work with you. Everyone wanted to know you.”
“I never felt that way.”
“That’s because you never had to think about it.”
I looked at her.
In my first life, I had taken that admission as a compliment. Now I heard something else beneath it.
Calculation.
“You could always get anything you wanted,” she continued.
“Not everything.”
“Adrian.”
She said the name slowly.
I lowered my gaze to my plate.
“Adrian chose me.”
“He loves you.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Vivian gave a faint smile. “Not always.”
I let the words hang between us.
“What do you think he wants?” I asked.
“Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“He wants a quiet life.”
“And I make his life anything but quiet?”
Vivian stirred her drink. “I didn’t say that.”
But she didn’t need to.
She planted an idea, then let me believe it had come from my own mind.
I had done the same thing to her in my second life.
The difference was, I knew exactly what I was doing.
“Adrian said you understood him,” Vivian said.
“He said that?”
“A few times.”
“Interesting.”
Vivian looked at me. “What?”
“Nothing.”
I filed that information away. Adrian had never said Vivian understood him. In my first life, he always said she made him feel free.
There was a difference between understanding someone and making him forget his responsibilities.
After lunch, Vivian took me to her new apartment. I recognized the address before her car came to a stop.
An apartment on the east side of the city.
She opened the door casually.
“It’s still a mess in here.”
That wasn’t true. The room was too neat. Almost uninhabited.
In one of the bedrooms, I saw the same kind of box as the one in our house.
Baby supplies.
I touched the edge of the cardboard box.
“For whom?”
Vivian stood behind me.
“A gift.”
“For whom?”
“For you.”
“You could have sent it directly.”
“I haven’t had the chance.”
I opened the box. Its contents were different from what I had seen at our house. There was a baby-care guide, doctors’ notes, and a list of medications.
I read the name of the clinic on one of the papers.
The same clinic where our family doctor had worked in my first life.
Vivian snatched the paper from my hand.
“Don’t look at other people’s private belongings.”
I looked at her.
“Sorry.”
She sighed and smiled again.
“It’s okay.”
We stood facing each other.
In her eyes, I saw a flicker of fear. Not because I had found evidence. She was afraid I was starting to ask the right questions.
I hugged her.
Her body stiffened before she slowly returned the embrace.
“Thank you for being my best friend,” I whispered.
She closed her eyes.
“Forever.”
I smiled against her shoulder.
Vivian didn’t know that I had just bound her to a promise she would one day break.