I started keeping the notebook in March.
It wasn't planned. I just needed to see it written down, needed proof I wasn't imagining the pattern. Black ink on white paper. Dates. Times. What Kensley said. What Cassian did.
March 14th. Dinner reservation, our first in weeks. Cassian's phone lit up at 7:43. Kensley's voice, breathy and scared: "There's someone outside my apartment. I can hear them trying the door." Cassian left before our appetizers arrived. Came back three hours later. No one had been there. Building security confirmed it.
March 29th. Cassian's mother's birthday. Family photos on the terrace. Kensley grabbed her throat mid-smile, gasping. Shellfish allergy, she said. Except I'd watched her eat shrimp cocktail twenty minutes earlier. Cassian carried her inside. I stood alone in the photo.
April 10th. Cassian came home early. Found me reading in the library. Sat down. Asked about my day. We talked for eleven minutes. His phone rang. Kensley, crying. A date had gone badly. She needed him. He left. I timed it. Eleven minutes. That was all we got.
I wrote it all down. Thirty-seven incidents over four months. Each one timed to the precise moment something might shift between us. A dinner. A conversation. A morning where he'd smiled at me over coffee.
Every single time, Kensley called. Every single time, Cassian left.
I wasn't angry anymore. Anger required hope. I was just documenting. Building a case no one would ever see.
Except tonight, Cassian saw it.
I'd fallen asleep at the kitchen table, notebook open, pen still in my hand. I woke to the sound of his key in the lock. 2:47 AM. He'd been at Kensley's since nine.
He stopped when he saw me. Saw the notebook.
"What's that?"
I could have lied. Should have. But I was tired, and some part of me—small, stupid, still hoping—thought maybe if he just looked, really looked, he'd see what I saw.
"A record," I said.
He crossed the kitchen. Picked up the notebook. Started reading.
I watched his face. Waited for recognition. Understanding. Something.
His expression went cold.
"You've been tracking her?"
"I've been tracking the pattern," I said carefully. "Look at the dates. Every time we—every time something might happen between us, she calls. Every time."
Cassian flipped through the pages. His jaw tightened with each one.
"This is sick, Sierra."
The words hit like a slap.
"Cassian, just look at the timing—"
"I'm looking at my wife obsessing over my best friend." He slammed the notebook on the table. "Documenting her life like some kind of stalker. Do you hear yourself?"
"I'm not obsessing. I'm showing you—"
"You're showing me that you're jealous." He leaned forward, hands flat on the table. "That you can't stand the fact that I care about someone who actually needs me. Someone who saved my life."
There it was. Always back to that. The rescue. The debt. The story Kensley had stolen and I'd never corrected because I'd been seven years old and scared and stupid enough to think the truth didn't matter if the right thing had happened anyway.
"She's manipulating you," I said quietly.
"She's hurting." Cassian's voice dropped, each word deliberate. "And instead of supporting her like a sister should, you're sitting here in the dark making lists of her suffering like it's evidence of some conspiracy."
"It's not a conspiracy. It's a pattern."
"It's pathetic."
The word hung in the air between us.
Cassian straightened. Picked up the notebook. For a second I thought he might read it again, might actually look.
He swept it off the table instead. It hit the floor, pages scattering.
"Get help, Sierra," he said. "This jealousy is poisoning you."
He walked out. Bedroom door closed. Lock clicked.
I sat there for a long time, looking at the scattered pages on the kitchen floor. Four months of documentation. Dates. Times. Proof.
It didn't matter.
I got down on my knees. Gathered the pages one by one. Smoothed them flat. Put them back in order.
My hands didn't shake. That surprised me.
I closed the notebook. Stood. Walked to my study—the small room off the living room that Cassian never entered because it was mine and nothing of mine interested him.
I locked the notebook in my desk drawer. Not hiding it. Just putting it away.
Something behind my ribs shifted. Not breaking. Rearranging. Like furniture moved in a room I'd lived in all my life, suddenly making the space unrecognizable.
I pulled out my phone. Romeo's last text was from yesterday: *Coffee tomorrow? No agenda. Just want to see you.*
I typed: *Yes.*
Then I added: *Thank you for asking.*
I hit send. Turned off the light. Sat in the dark in my study, in my chair, in the one room in this penthouse that was mine.
I wasn't angry. I wasn't hurt. I was something else entirely.
I was done.
