Page 46 of The Rook’s Obsession

It’s tucked in the back on the left-hand side of the room. A window seat overlooking the corner, where the light comes in at an angle that turns the table gold. I’m staring at it with a kind of certainty I can’t explain. It’s a pull, magnetic, involuntary. My body is being drawn to a place it remembers, even if my mind refuses to cooperate.

The booth is already taken by two people.

Liam is one of them.

He’s on the inside with his back to the wall, the way men like him always sit. Next to him is a woman I haven’t met. She’s blonde and pretty, quietly composed. Instinct makes me tick through the various aspects of her body language, the way she holds her face, everything, because it’s what my conscious mind was trained to do.

Then she looks at me, and I see something close to sadness mixed with the kindness radiating from her. Now she’s a full person instead of a list of characteristics, and she’s shining her full attention on me. It’s like she understands something about this moment I haven’t caught up to yet.

Liam’s voice is rougher than the last time I heard it. “Laura.” He rises from the booth, catches himself, and sits back down. Just like Nick, he’s learning to give me space. “I’m glad you came.”

Nick’s hand finds the small of my back. Not to push me. More like he’s trying to anchor me as we slide into the booth across from them. The vinyl creaks. The laminated menu in front of me is exactly what I expected, complete with faded photos of food that looks way too good to be real.

I’m more interested in the couple across from me right now. “This is Aurora,” Liam explains, looking at her. “My wife.”

She extends a hand across the table. Her grip is firm and her smile is warm. “It’s nice to meet you,” she says. I like the way she keeps it simple. There’s no pressure behind it.

“Likewise,” I manage, which is more than I expected to get out.

Liam’s eyes move over my face the way they did at the cabin. He’s searching, hungry for something I can’t give him. He’s trying so hard to hide how much it hurts. “You found us as soon as you came in.”

“I did,” I murmur. Something about it feels heavier than it should. “It’s like I knew where I would find you.”

“This was our booth. We came here every Sunday,” he explains. “This was where we would sit. Eventually, whoever was working the Sunday morning shift knew to keep the booth empty for us. Mom and Dad would sit on one side, and the two of us would sit on the other. Every week. As far back as I can remember.”

And I believe him because I almost feel it. A pressure in my chest, a stinging behind my eyes. The memory is so close. I feel it the way I would feel someone standing behind me in a dark room. Just out of my reach, but there. Right there.

“The waitress would always give us crayons,” he continues. His voice is rough but controlled. Like he’s fighting to contain his emotions, the way I am. “You would draw all over the placemats. Mom kept them. She had a whole stack in the kitchen drawer.”

My throat is so tight, I can barely breathe. Instead of letting him see what this has done to me, I stare at the menu.

The waitress appears. She’s a woman in her fifties with a pad and a pen and the kind of no-nonsense attitude that tells me she’s done this ten thousand times before. “What can I get you?”

“Pancakes,” I tell her. “With bananas and chocolate chips, please.”

I haven’t even looked at the menu. I don’t know where that came from. It bypassed my brain, and the order rose from someplace deeper. Someplace instinctive, automatic. It’s the middle of the afternoon, yet here I am, craving pancakes.

The table goes silent. It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the diner as I look back and forth between the two men staring intensely at each other now. “What?” I whisper. It’s pretty damn uncomfortable.

Liam sounds like he’s choking. “That was always your order. Every week. Pancakes with bananas and chocolate chips.”

Meanwhile, the waitress has no idea what we’re talking about. She only scribbles on her pad and takes Nick’s order before moving along to another table. The moment passes.

For everybody but me, anyway. He could be making it up, of course. Telling me what he imagines I want to hear. He couldn’t possibly know what I want to hear, right? Because he doesn’t know me. Nobody at this table really knows me.

But… for the first time in all the years I can actually remember, I want somebody to know me. I actually want to be known, because when I watch Liam and Aurora together, it makes something ache in my chest. Something I didn’t even know was there until now.

In spite of everything, this feels strangely normal. The four of us in a booth, chatting quietly until the food comes, and my eyes almost bulge out at the sight of pancakes big enough to almost hang over the edges of my plate. Aurora reaches over Liam’s plate for the ketchup to use on her fries. Liam steals one of them, and she smacks his hand playfully. When she laughs, the look on his face… he could light up a room.

“How did you two meet?” I ask, because I’m curious, and because asking questions about other people is safer than answering questions about myself.

She glances at Liam with an expression that’s equal parts affection and mischief. “He blackmailed me into marrying him.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“You heard her,” Nick mutters from beside me, sipping his coffee like this is old news.

“It’s a long story,” Liam says, eyeing his wife. I get the feeling this is not the version of their love story he would choose to lead with.