THE STORY WANTS ME BACK

The morning after the gala, Noah filed a formal complaint about Julian's threats and repeated unwanted contact. We also began documenting suspicious activity around my work: unfamiliar cars outside the museum, anonymous emails, and a visitor who had demanded my schedule from the receptionist.

I wasn't going to let fear drive me indoors again. But I took precautions. I changed my route to work. I checked in with colleagues. I asked the museum to stop publishing staff schedules online.

Adrian's security team discovered that a private investigator had been hired through a Mercer Group subsidiary. Julian denied knowing anything about it. His commercial adviser, Vanessa Cole, claimed the investigator was working on an unrelated corporate matter.

I had met Vanessa once. She was polished, incisive, and never looked at anyone without seeming to calculate their value. At Julian's birthday party she'd laughed at my humiliation while pretending to be absorbed in her phone.

When Noah showed me her photograph, an image from the awful future I'd seen on the coast flashed across my mind: a black sedan, rain-slick pavement, glass flying toward my face.

“I think there's going to be an accident,” I said.

Noah didn't laugh. By then he'd seen enough of Julian's behavior to take my fear seriously, even without understanding where it came from.

“Then we treat it like a credible concern. Tell me everything you remember.”

I told him about the road and the car. I didn't try to convince him that I'd seen pages of my own fictional future. He asked practical questions: location, weather, possible witnesses. We arranged for a colleague to accompany me when I visited an off-site conservation lab.

For several days, nothing happened. Adrian and I made dinner, bickered about the right way to load the dishwasher, and shared a slow dance in the kitchen while the oven timer ticked. Each ordinary moment felt precious because it belonged to me.

“You don't have to stay awake waiting for me,” Adrian said one evening after a late meeting.

“I know.” I set aside my book. “I wanted to.”

He gave me a look that warmed me all the way through.

The accident happened on a clear Thursday afternoon, not a stormy night.

I was leaving the restoration lab with a colleague when an engine roared around the corner. A black sedan mounted the curb, heading directly toward us. I shoved my colleague behind a concrete planter and jumped away. The car clipped the planter, shattered a glass panel, and sped off.

My shoulder struck the pavement. Blood ran from a shallow cut on my arm. My colleague called emergency services while I sat on the curb, trembling.

Black sedan. Broken glass. The future had reached for me again, but not quite in the way I remembered.

At the hospital, Adrian arrived before the doctor finished cleaning my wound. He asked whether I was hurt anywhere else, then sat close enough for our knees to touch.

“I'm here,” he said.

“I know.”

“You don't have to pretend you're fine.”

I let myself lean into him. “I'm terrified.”

“Then we'll be terrified and careful together.”

The police retrieved security footage from the street. The car was registered to a short-term rental company. A further camera showed the driver meeting a woman outside a Mercer-owned office three hours earlier.

The woman was Vanessa Cole.

Noah laid the images on my hospital bed, his face grim.

“This doesn't prove she ordered the crash,” he said. “But it gives investigators a direct lead.”

I stared at the photographs until the faces blurred.

The old story had promised a random tragedy. Reality was uglier. Someone had made choices that could have killed me.