“YOU SHOULDN’T have come,” the man said softly.
Lily stopped walking.
Fog rolled low over the ground, thick enough that the world felt reduced to a narrow pocket of sound and breath and shadow. The place was deliberately ordinary. A public overlook just beyond town, a stretch of concrete railing facing nothing dramatic. No cliff, no water, no trees worth hiding behind. Neutral ground. Chosen carefully.
She had known he would choose somewhere like this.
Lily turned slowly, her boots crunching faintly against frost-damp gravel. She did not answer him right away. She let the silence stretch, let it press into the hollow space in her chest that had been vibrating since before dawn.
The man stood several feet away, hands visible, posture almost gentle. He wore a dark coat, collar turned up
