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“That sounds complimentary until you think about it for two seconds.”

“Yeah.”

A bitter laugh slips out. “Did he say I abandoned everyone?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

His eyes meet mine. “I don’t lie well.”

“That's exactly what someone who lies well would say.”

“Ben said you survived.”

I look away first.

The lamp buzzes faintly beside me. Outside, wind moves through the trees. Upstairs, the old house creaks and settles around the sleeping child who shouldn't be my responsibility and already is.

I swallow. “I’m not sure he was right.”

Briggs doesn’t soften. Doesn’t rush to reassure me. I respect him for that. “Surviving doesn’t always look good while it’s happening.”

My eyes sting.

Absolutely not.

No.

I am not crying in front of the terrifying stranger who removes his boots at the door and says devastating things in seven words or fewer.

I clear my throat. “So what now?”

“Now I talk to Pete Dawson, the owner of the bar, about camera footage. Ashby keeps digging into the financials. Torin…”

Torin?

I stiffen, a bell going off in my head so loud, I can’t hear anything else Briggs is saying.

No, it can’t be… I need to get rid of that idea before I lose my damn mind. Torin was just a guy on the plane. He’s not someone I’m going to see here. No way.

Briggs’ eyes move again, drawn to the bookshelves behind me.

The shelves are a mess. Ben never organized by genre, author, or height, which remains morally indefensible in my view. Paperbacks lean against motorcycle manuals. A battered fantasy trilogy sits beside tax documents. There are cookbooks he never used, poetry books he pretended not to own, and at least six copies of The Hobbit because he kept buying them at thrift stores “in case of emergencies.”

Briggs stands.

I tense.

He moves to the shelf with a strange certainty, like memory is tugging him by the sleeve. His fingers hover over the spines, then stop at a battered, blue hardcover wedged between a repair manual and a collection of ghost stories.

“Oh,” he says.

“What?”

He pulls the book free. The cover is worn nearly smooth at the corners, gold lettering faded across the front.

The Once and Future King.