My key turns in the lock I never bothered to fix, the deadbolt clicking back like it's been waiting for me. Two days. Two days since I left this door swinging on its hinges, and the apartment smells exactly the way I left it—Ethan's coffee gone bitter in the pot, the TV still murmuring some late-night show he probably fell asleep to. The dishes in the sink. His jacket draped over the chair I used to sit in. I stand in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and I can't make myself step further.

"Maya." Derek's voice from the hall, low, patient. "You okay?"

I nod, but I'm not looking at him. I'm looking at the bedroom door, half-open, and the shape of Ethan's body under the sheets. He's home. He's always home, even when he's not really there. The lie sits in my throat like a stone I swallowed weeks ago—business trip, three days, sister's place—and it's still holding, still keeping me from having to explain the wreckage I've made of us.

I close the door. The latch clicks, and it sounds like a promise I'm not sure I can keep.

Back in the truck, the engine's still running, heat curling from the vents. Derek's hand finds my knee, heavy and warm through the thin fabric of my skirt. I don't pull away. But the ghost of that unlocked door follows me, settles in the space between us like a third passenger.

"You didn't go in," he says. Not a question.

"I didn't need to." I watch the streetlights slide past, orange smears on wet asphalt. "I got what I came for."

"Which was?"

I turn to him. His profile's sharp in the dashboard glow, jaw set, eyes on the road. The man who took me on a bus. The man who's been watching me for three years. The man who put a baby in me and lost it before I could even tell him I was glad.

"Proof I can still walk away," I say.

His hand squeezes my knee, thumb tracing a slow circle. "That's my girl."

The truck turns onto Halstead, and the buildings get taller, dirtier, the streetlights fewer. Mer's office is a squat brick thing wedged between a laundromat and a check-cashing joint, the third-floor windows dark except for one—hers, I know, the one that looks down on the street like she's been waiting for us.

Derek pulls to the curb, kills the engine. The silence rushes in, thick with everything we haven't said since the clinic.

"Seatbelt," he says, reaching for the door handle. "Door locked. Eyes on your hands."

"I remember."

"And if I'm not back in twenty minutes—"

"You'll be back in twenty minutes." I say it flat, final, the way I've learned to say things I need to be true. "You're not leaving me in this truck."

He looks at me, and for a second the cocky mechanic's mask slips, and I see the man who cried in a clinic bathroom, who held my hand while a nurse said words neither of us wanted to hear. He leans over, kisses me hard, quick, like he's stealing it. Then he's out of the truck, the door closing with a solid thunk, and I'm alone.

The envelope's on the seat between us, the cash thick and heavy, the address line already smudged from my grip. I lock the doors. I put my hands in my lap. I watch him cross the street, broad shoulders in a clean shirt he must have bought for this, and I count the seconds like they're currency.

He's halfway up the steps when my phone buzzes.

I don't have my phone. I turned it off two days ago, left it in a drawer at Derek's place. But the buzz is real, vibrating against my thigh, and when I fish it out of my jacket pocket I see the screen lit up with a name I haven't seen in days.

Ethan.

I stare at it. The truck's warm, the engine ticking as it cools, and Derek's disappearing through Mer's door, and my thumb is already moving, already answering, before I can stop it.

"Hello?"

"Maya." His voice is rough, sleep-thick, confused. "You're not at your sister's. I just—I went to the bathroom, and the door to the apartment was open. Like, wide open. Were you here?"

The streetlight above the truck flickers. I can see my reflection in the window, pale and hollow, the phone pressed to my ear like a lifeline.

"I—" The lie sticks. I swallow it down. "I came back for something. I didn't want to wake you."

"You didn't wake me. You left the door open." He sounds more awake now, something sharp creeping into his voice. "Maya, what's going on? You've been gone for two days. You said three. You said—"

"I know what I said." My voice comes out harder than I meant. The envelope's still on the seat, and I can feel Derek's cum dried on my thighs from this morning, a ghost of him I haven't washed away. "I'm coming home. Just—give me a day. One more day, Ethan. Please."

Silence. The truck's engine ticks. Somewhere above, a light goes out in Mer's office.

"You're not coming home, are you." It's not a question. He knows. Of course he knows—he's not stupid, he's just been busy, and I've been lying, and the door's been unlocked this whole time, waiting for one of us to notice.

"I'll be home," I say. And I mean it. I mean it the way I mean everything these days, which is to say I don't know what I'm saying at all. "I just need to finish something first."

The line goes dead. He hung up, or I did, I can't tell. The phone's still warm in my hand when I look up and see Derek coming back down the steps, the envelope thinner in his grip, a paper in his other hand that wasn't there before.

He opens the door, gets in, and the scent of him fills the cab—motor oil and sweat and something darker, something mine. He hands me the paper. It's a receipt, signed in Mer's tight, angry scrawl, the word PAID stamped in red across the bottom.

"She took it," he says. "She took the cash, and she signed the release, and she told me to tell you that you're still a liability, but she's done with us." He pauses, looking at the phone in my hand, the screen still glowing. "Who was that?"

I look at the receipt, then at him, then out the windshield at the brick building where Mer's light just went dark. The unlocked door of my apartment is still open, somewhere behind us, waiting.

"Nobody," I say. "Just a ghost."

I put the phone in my pocket, and Derek starts the engine, and we drive away from Halstead with the PAID receipt folded in my fist and the ghost of Ethan's voice still buzzing in my ear.

The phone's screen goes dark for a second, then lights up again—Ethan's name, his number, the little photo of him I still haven't changed. The one from the lake last summer, squinting into the sun, his arm around my shoulders like I was something he wanted to keep. My thumb hovers over the screen, and the truck's engine hums beneath me, and Derek's eyes are on the road but I can feel him watching anyway.

"He's calling again." I don't mean to say it out loud. It just comes out, flat and small.

Derek doesn't answer. The receipt's still in my other hand, the paper warm from my grip, PAID stamped across it in that angry red. I can feel the ghost of Ethan's voice in my ear, the way he said *you're not coming home, are you*—not angry, not even sad. Just knowing. Like he'd finally looked up from his screen long enough to see the door was open, and I was already gone.

The phone buzzes again. Third time. I count the vibrations like heartbeats.

"You gonna get that?" Derek's voice is low, careful. He's giving me the choice. I hate that he's giving me the choice.

"I don't know what to say to him." The words come out raw, honest in a way I haven't been with anyone in weeks. "I don't know how to tell him I'm not the person he thinks I am."

Derek's hand leaves the wheel, finds my thigh. His palm is rough, callused, warm through the thin fabric of my skirt. "You don't have to tell him anything. You already made your choice."

I look at him. The dashboard light catches the line of his jaw, the way his thumb traces a slow circle on my skin. The man who took me on a bus. The man who watched me for three years, who saw me cry in the shower, who put a baby in me and lost it before I could decide how I felt about it.

"Did I?" The question slips out before I can catch it. "I left the door open, Derek. I didn't even close it behind me."

His thumb stops. The truck rolls through a yellow light, and the streets get darker, the buildings thinner, and I can feel the weight of what I just said settling between us like dust.

"You came back," he says slowly. "You came back to get your things, and you stood in the doorway, and you left again. That's a choice, Maya. That's the choice."

My phone buzzes again. Ethan. Still Ethan. I turn it over in my hand, the screen lighting up my palm, his name glowing like a small, insistent sun.

"He knows," I whisper. "He knows I'm not coming home. He said it. He said—" My voice cracks. I swallow it down. "He said it like he'd known for a while. Like he was just waiting for me to admit it."

Derek pulls the truck over, the tires crunching on gravel. The engine idles, and he turns to face me, his blue eyes sharp in the dark. "What do you want to do?"

The question hangs in the cab, heavy and real. The receipt's still in my fist. The phone's still warm in my hand. Somewhere behind us, my apartment door is still open, and Ethan's probably standing in the hallway, staring at the empty bedroom, doing the math on all the nights I came home late and said nothing.

I look down at the phone. His name is still there, waiting. My thumb moves without me telling it to, sliding across the screen, and I watch myself press the green button like I'm watching someone else do it.

"Ethan."

"Maya." His voice is rough, but steady. Too steady. "I found your pills."

My stomach drops. The truck's engine ticks. Derek's hand is still on my thigh, but I can't feel it anymore.

"In the bathroom," Ethan says. "The trash. There's a test—" He pauses, and I hear him breathe, slow and careful. "Maya, are you pregnant?"

The word hits me like a wall. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The receipt crinkles in my fist. Derek's watching me, his face unreadable, and I can feel the weight of everything I haven't told him—the test, the clinic, the nurse's voice, the way my body let go of something I never got to decide if I wanted.

"Maya." Ethan's voice is harder now. "Answer me."

I look out the windshield. The streetlight above us flickers, and I see my reflection in the glass—pale, hollow, a ghost of the girl who used to leave the door unlocked because she trusted the world.

"I was," I say. The word comes out small, broken. "I'm not anymore."

The silence on the other end stretches. I can hear him thinking, the gears turning, the way he does when he's solving a problem at work—clicking through the variables, the inputs, the things that don't add up. The door. The trip. The three days. The test in the trash.

"Whose is it?" he asks.

Derek's hand tightens on my thigh. The phone is cold against my ear. The PAID receipt is still in my fist, and I can feel the ghost of the unlocked door behind me, swinging open, waiting for me to walk through it one last time.

"It's not yours," I say.

And I hang up.

The phone is still warm in my hand when Derek's fingers close over mine, gentle but insistent, prying the device from my grip. He doesn't look at me. He looks at the screen, at Ethan's name still glowing there, and something hard settles in his jaw.

"Give me the phone."

"Derek—"

"Give it to me."

I let it go. His thumb finds the call button before I can argue, and he lifts it to his ear, his eyes fixed on the windshield, on the dark street ahead. The truck's engine idles, low and patient, and I can hear the click of the line connecting, the silence stretching.

"Ethan." Derek's voice is flat, calm, the voice he uses when he's tightening a bolt that's about to strip. "This is Derek Vance. You don't know me, but you've seen my garage from your window."

I can't hear what Ethan says, but I can imagine it—the confusion, the anger, the gears turning. Derek listens, his free hand still on the wheel, his knuckles white.

"She's not coming back," Derek says. No preamble, no softening. The words drop into the cab like stones. "She's not coming home. She's with me, and she's staying with me, and I'm telling you this because she's too fucking scared to say it herself."

My breath catches. The receipt's still in my fist, the paper sharp against my palm. I want to grab the phone, to stop him, but my hands won't move.

"I know about the test," Derek continues, his voice dropping lower, harder. "I know about the baby. I know she lost it, and I know it wasn't yours. That's on me. That's mine. And I'm not asking for your forgiveness—I don't want it. I just want you to hear it from a man, not from a voicemail."

Silence on the line. The truck's heater hums. I can hear my own heartbeat, loud in my ears.

"She's been lying to you for weeks," Derek says, and his eyes finally flick to me, blue and unreadable. "And that's on her. But the lying ends now. She's not coming back to that apartment, and she's not coming back to you. The door's closed, Ethan. Close it on your side."

The phone crackles. I hear Ethan's voice, sharp and rising, but I can't make out the words. Derek listens, his jaw tight, and then he speaks over him, calm and final.

"You want to be angry? Be angry. You want to blame me? Blame me. But don't call her again. She's done answering."

He ends the call. The screen goes dark. He hands the phone back to me, his fingers brushing mine, and I take it like it's made of glass.

"You shouldn't have done that," I whisper. "That was mine to say."

"You said it." His voice is quiet, rough. "You said it wasn't his. He just needed to hear it from someone who wasn't going to take it back."

I stare at him. The dashboard light catches the scar on his knuckles, the grease still under his nails despite the clean shirt. The man who took me on a bus. The man who watched me for three years. The man who just drew a line in the sand with my ex-boyfriend's voice still ringing in his ear.

"He's going to tell people," I say. "He's going to—"

"Let him." Derek starts the engine, the rumble filling the cab. "Let him tell the whole city. I don't care about the garage, Maya. I don't care about Mer, or Vince, or any of it. I care about you, and you're in this truck, and you're not going anywhere."

The phone in my hand buzzes one last time. Ethan's name, his photo, the lake from last summer. I watch it light up and fade, light up and fade, and then I press the power button and watch the screen go black.

The truck pulls away from the curb. The streetlights slide past, orange smears on wet asphalt, and the receipt's still in my fist, PAID stamped across it like a scar. I don't look back at Halstead. I don't look back at the apartment with its open door and its bitter coffee and its ghost of a girl who used to trust the world.

Derek's hand finds my thigh again, warm and heavy, and I let myself lean into him, just a little, just enough to feel the solid weight of him beside me.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"Home," he says. And for the first time in weeks, I believe him.