Don’t look back.

I walked in.

Each step felt weighted, dragging, but the memory of that hug kept my feet moving.

A heavy steel door groaned open from the inside, and there was Lachlan, sitting at a folding table in the center of the vast dark space — and he did not look like the flawless executive from the courthouse anymore.

His shirt was wrinkled, his hair a mess, his eyes ringed dark.

He looked like a man who had not slept in days, a man being crushed from above by something bigger than himself.