Part 1The Ghost Between Our Hearts

Everyone told me I’d struck gold with Lauren.

She was brilliant, driven, and possessed the kind of effortless grace that made people stop and look twice when she walked into a room. But whenever our friends raised their glasses to toast our good fortune, a quiet, bitter ache tightened in my chest.

Lauren was ambitious—so ambitious that every time I brought up marriage, she found a way to slip out of the conversation.

"Things are just too crazy at the firm right now, Luke," she’d say, smoothing down the lapel of my jacket with that gentle, reasonable smile. "Let’s get the company through this funding round first. Career comes first."

She was also generous to a fault. So generous that when her ex-boyfriend moved back to the States, she enveloped him in a cocoon of unreserved devotion.

"I broke his heart when I left for grad school," she’d explained, her voice heavy with an old, lingering guilt. "He ended up moving overseas all by himself, and he had a miserable few years out there. I owe him, Luke. I need to make it up to him."

She needed to make it up to him, so the moment she heard he was couch-surfing and looking for a place in Chicago, she offered him our spare room.

Travis doesn't really have family left here, she’d told me. Finding an apartment takes time, and our guest room is just sitting empty. It’s temporary, just a landing pad.

She needed to make it up to him, so the afternoon I was discharged from the hospital after a three-day bout of acute bronchitis, she asked me to stand over a hot stove and make the bourbon-glazed short ribs he loved.

Travis told me he missed your cooking more than anything while he was in London, she’d said, pressing a kiss to my temple. Nobody makes them like you do. Just a small batch for dinner?

She needed to make it up to him, which was why it was nearly one in the morning, and she was still curled up on the sectional downstairs, watching the playoffs with him.

I lay in the dark of our master bedroom, staring at the ceiling, listening to the muffled bursts of their laughter drifting up through the floorboards. When Travis’s voice rose in a triumphant shout followed by Lauren’s familiar, breathless giggle, something inside me finally snapped.

I threw off the duvet, walked downstairs barefoot, and stepped into the glow of the television.

Without a word, I reached down and yanked the power cord straight out of the wall.

The screen died. The room plummeted into silence.

I turned and looked directly at Lauren. "Yesterday I asked you to come with me to the market, and you said you were drowning in work. You didn't have twenty minutes for groceries, but you have all night to watch basketball?"

Lauren blinked, startled, then let out a slow, weary sigh as she stood up and crossed the rug toward me.

"Luke, that’s completely different." Her tone was measured, the voice she used to de-escalate difficult clients. "I told you, Travis is a guest. He won't be here forever, and the least we can do is make him feel welcome. We can go to the grocery store anytime. We have the rest of our lives for errands."

"He’s right, man. Don't be mad at her."

Travis leaned back against the cushions, peering out from behind Lauren’s shoulder. His voice was laced with an apologetic tremor, but the look in his eyes was unmistakable—the exact same triumphant, predatory gleam he’d worn eight years ago when he took my first love from me.

I took a slow, deliberate breath. I looked at Lauren—at the sharp line of her jaw, the slight arch of her brow, the striking features that bore a haunting, fifty-percent resemblance to Sienna.

"Enjoy hosting," I said quietly. "I'm done playing along."

I didn't wait for her reply. I walked back upstairs, pulled my duffel bag from the top of the closet, and began tossing shirts into it.

Seconds later, Lauren came in. She caught my wrist, pulled the clothes from my grip, and threw them onto the unmade mattress. Her face was etched with deep, unyielding exhaustion.

"Luke, can you please stop acting like a child?" she pleaded, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I was in back-to-back pitches all day. I have an executive board meeting at eight tomorrow morning. I physically do not have the energy to fight with you tonight."

No energy.

She never had energy when it came to me. For me, she had deadlines, migraines, and depleted reserves. But for Travis, she had infinite reserves of patience, late-night camaraderie, and warm smiles.

I turned my head away, scooped the clothes back up, and shoved them into the bag. "Then don't fight. I'll get a room downtown."

"Luke!" She grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to face her. "What is this really about? What are you throwing a fit over?"

"A fit?" I looked down into her eyes, my voice rising despite my efforts to keep it steady. "Travis is your ex. You moved another man into the house we bought together. You spend every spare second catering to him, and you're asking me what I'm throwing a fit over?"

Lauren’s jaw tightened. "That was years ago. We are friends, Luke. Just friends. I am trying to help someone who is having a hard time."

I let out a harsh, humorless laugh. "You're just a saint, aren't you?"

Her brows knitted together in wounded frustration. "Why are you being so cruel? You know who I am. You know how I operate."

She wasn't lying about that part. Lauren was generous to everyone. When a friend was in trouble, she threw herself into the fire without hesitation. Two years ago, when a college friend was being threatened by an abusive loan shark, she had inserted herself into the middle of it, ending up in the ER with three cracked ribs and a lacerated arm. She treated my family, my friends, and total strangers with the same boundless, reckless charity.

But with Travis, was it really that simple?

The bedroom door clicked, opening an inch. Travis hovered in the doorway, looking small, remorseful, and entirely out of place.

"I'm so sorry, guys," he whispered, his eyes darting between us. "This is my fault. I’m the reason you're fighting. I'll pack my bags right now. I'll find somewhere else to stay tonight."

Lauren’s expression softened instantly. She took a step toward him. "Don't be ridiculous, Travis. It’s one in the morning, and you don't even have a car. In a few days, when we look at that place in Lincoln Park—"

"Let him go to a hotel," I cut in coldly.

"Luke!" Lauren snapped, glaring at me with genuine reproach.

I didn't yield an inch. "Either he walks out that door tonight, or I do."

The tension in the room thickened until it felt difficult to draw breath. Lauren stared at me, her jaw set, before she grabbed her purse and car keys off the dresser.

"Fine," she said through gritted teeth. "I'll drive him to the Marriott downtown. Go to sleep."

The front door clicked open downstairs. A sudden, visceral memory flared in my mind, cold and sharp. I dropped my bag and sprinted down the stairs, catching them on the front porch.

"Lauren," I called out, my voice tight. "You take the car. You stay at the hotel. Travis stays here."

Lauren spun around, her eyes widening in disbelief. "You don't trust me?"

I bit the inside of my cheek and stayed silent.

It wasn't that I didn't trust her. It was that I knew Travis. I knew the architecture of his games. Eight years ago, I had made the mistake of being the accommodating boyfriend, letting Sienna drive a drunk, weeping Travis back to his apartment while I stayed behind to clean up after the party.

By sunrise, they were in his bed.

Seeing my silence, Lauren took it as an indictment. A dark, bitter flush crept up her neck.

"Fine," she spat out, nodding once, twice. "Fine. Have it your way."

She snatched her jacket, marched past me down the driveway, got into her Audi, and slammed the door. The engine roared to life, tires crunching over the gravel, and she was gone.

Silence rushed back into the house, suffocating and vast.

Travis stood by the door, watching the taillights disappear down the street. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face.

"Not bad, Luke," he said, chuckling softly under his breath. "You actually learned something."

I looked at him, feeling a hollow, icy numbness settle into my bones. I walked over to the credenza by the couch, reached into the hidden seam beneath the bottom shelf, and pulled out a battered pack of American Spirits.

I tapped one out and lit it with a shaky hand.

Travis strolled over, sank onto the couch beside me, and slipped the pack from my fingers. He pulled out a cigarette, struck a match, and took a long, leisurely drag, watching the blue smoke curl toward the ceiling.

"All these years," he murmured, his gaze sliding toward me with heavy, deliberate intention. "Still smoking the same brand."

I didn't look at him. "Aren't you?"