I looked again at the photograph.
“You’re standing five feet away from him.”
“That doesn’t mean we met.”
“What does that even mean?”
Daniel turned the photograph over.
There was writing on the back.
Only one sentence.
He read it silently.
Then handed it to me.
The handwriting was neat.
Almost elegant.
I read the message once.
Then again.
Ethan is not the reason you were brought to Houston. Ask Adrian who was supposed to be sitting in seat 14B.
My eyes lifted slowly.
Seat 14B.
The seat beside mine.
Adrian’s seat.
I looked down at Lily sleeping peacefully behind me.
Then toward the empty hotel hallway.
And for the first time since boarding the plane in Dallas, I wondered whether meeting Adrian Prescott had been an accident at all.
PART 3: A Stranger Let Me Sleep on His Shoulder—Then My Ex-Husband Found Me Before the Plane Even Landed – 035
I read the sentence on the back of the photograph until the words stopped looking like language.
Ask Adrian who was supposed to be sitting in seat 14B.
The hotel hallway remained perfectly quiet.
Somewhere behind me, the air conditioner hummed.
Lily slept inside the room, one arm thrown over her stuffed rabbit, unaware that her mother had spent the last twenty minutes discovering that nearly everyone in her life seemed to know something she did not.
I looked at Daniel.
“What seat was Adrian in?”
His expression answered before his mouth did.
“Fourteen B.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course it was.
For one irrational second, I wanted to tear the photograph in half.
Instead, I held it tighter.
My phone was still pressed to my ear.
“Ethan?”
He hadn’t disconnected.
“I’m here.”
“Do you know anything about this?”
“About the seat?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“About Adrian being on that flight?”
“No.”
“About me being on that flight?”
“Elena.”
I hated the way my name sounded when he used it as a substitute for an answer.
“I bought the ticket myself.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Silence.
I opened my eyes.
“How do you know?”
“I saw the charge.”
My chest tightened.
“You said I couldn’t access the account.”
“You couldn’t. I still received transaction alerts.”
“Then you knew I was leaving Dallas.”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I thought that was what you wanted.”
I nearly laughed.
“That has never stopped you before.”
