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I’m thinking.

I’m aware that I’m thinking about something that is genuinely not my problem.

I’m also aware that Bella just told her friend that I’ll be texting again in a week, which — no — and that Evan is operating on the same confidence that my absence makes space for his plan, which also no, and that both of them are counting on a version of events where I stepped in tonight because it was convenient and walked away because it doesn’t matter, and something in that calculation sits wrong with me in a way that I’m not going to pick at right now.

I run a hand through my hair.

Then I go back inside and find Wyatt.

Wyatt is in the kitchen doing the post-party version of cleanup that he does without being asked — cups in the trash, surfaces wiped down, the systematic competence of someone who was raised to leave spaces the way he found them. He looks up when I come in.

“Porch,” he says.

“Porch,” I confirm.

He hands me a trash bag without comment. I start helping. We work in the easy quiet of people who don’t need to fill it, and for a few minutes I just think about the cups and the counters and the task of making the kitchen functional again.

“The girl,” Wyatt says, eventually.

“Sloane.”

“Wren’s roommate.”

“Cash brief you too?”

“Cash briefs everyone.” He ties off a bag. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t push it. That’s Wyatt’s version of a gift — the door held open without pressure, the question asked once and set down. I’ve been grateful for it more times than I’ve told him, which is the same number of times I’ve been grateful for anything in this house, which is too many to count and which I keep to myself because some things are better as understood than as said.

I’m still thinking.

The thinking has a shape now. I can feel it the way I feel a play developing on the ice, the pattern assembling before I’ve consciously identified it — positions, angles, where everything is going to be in three seconds. I’ve been doing this since I was twelve. It’s the part of my brain that works fast, the part that doesn’t care about the letters on the page, and when it fires on something it’s usually right.

The problem is Evan. Not in the abstract — specifically the Evan who has a plan and a timeline and a read on Sloane that is accurate enough to be uncomfortable. The Evan who is going to give her a week and then show up with flowers and is counting on isolation to do the rest of the work.

The solution, theoretically, is the removal of the isolation.

Which requires — also theoretically — someone whose presence changes Evan’s math. Someone visible, someone he’d have to factor in. Someone who closes the door he’s counting on being open.

Which is a completely reasonable line of thinking that I am definitely not applying to myself.

I finish the trash bag.

“I need to talk to Sloane Beckett,” I say.

Wyatt looks at me with the calm attention he brings to all information. “Okay,” he says, like I’ve told him the weather.

“I have an idea.”

“Does the idea involve the guy who grabbed her arm?”

“Kind of,” I admit, knowing I can admit something like this to Wyatt.

He is quiet for a moment. Then: “Cash is going to have opinions.”