Reaching under the bed for the storage box, my fingers brushed against something cold and metallic instead of the plastic bin. I froze, my heart immediately starting to pound a frantic rhythm against my ribs, already knowing deep down this wasn’t good.
Pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook, thin and worn. Not his usual kind, this felt foreign and strangely heavy in my hand. I opened it slowly, the pages smelling faintly of old paper and something else I couldn’t quite place. Dates, names, places I didn’t recognize filled the hurried lines.
Then, on a fresh page towards the back, I saw *her* name. Scrawled over and over, with little hearts drawn around it like some teenager’s diary. My breath hitched, catching painfully in my throat. He walked in just then, keys jingling softly in his pocket, smelling faintly of that cheap floral perfume I’d smelled before but couldn’t identify.
“What is that you have?” he asked, his voice too casual, too calm for the storm gathering inside me. I held it up, tears blurring the hurried ink on the page as I glared at him. “Who is ‘Sarah’? Tell me *right now*.” His face went from bored indifference to stark white, then set hard as stone. He didn’t say a word, just walked to the drawer and pulled out a small, black gun.
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*…*”Put it away,” I managed, my voice trembling despite my efforts to sound strong. “Just tell me the truth.”
He stared at the gun, then back at me, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. He lowered it slowly, placing it on the bedside table. “It’s not what you think.”
“Then what is it?” I demanded, taking a step closer, the notebook clutched tightly in my hand. “This Sarah? The dates? The places? Explain it.”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “It was a long time ago,” he began, his voice low. “Before you. When I was young, I was involved in something… dangerous. ‘Sarah’ was an alias. The notebook is a record, a way for me to remember… things I had to do.”
I stared at him, disbelief warring with a desperate hope that he was telling the truth. “Dangerous how? What things?”
He hesitated, then his gaze hardened. “I can’t tell you. It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Better for whom?” I challenged. “Me? Or you?”
He closed the distance between us, reaching out to take my hand. “Please, believe me. It’s in the past. I left that life behind. You’re my life now.”
I looked into his eyes, searching for any hint of deception. I saw fear, regret, but also a deep love that I knew, at least, was real. Could I trust him? Could I accept that there was a part of his life he couldn’t share with me?
I took a deep breath. “I want to believe you,” I said softly. “But I need to know I can trust you completely.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll show you. Not everything, but enough for you to understand.”
He reached for the notebook, his fingers tracing the faded leather. “This life,” he said, “It’s buried deep. But I’ll show you the edges. And I swear, from now on, there will be no more secrets between us.”
He started to explain the code, the dates, the places. It was a story of espionage, danger, and choices made in a desperate situation. He had been young, naive, and manipulated. “Sarah” was a code name for an operation. The hearts were for a girl who had been the target and had died. As he spoke, the tears in my eyes dried, replaced by a strange mix of relief and sadness.
I listened, trying to reconcile the man I knew with the figure from his past. As he finished, I leaned in and hugged him, relieved to be done with the tension and confusion.
I could sense that he was relieved too.
It wouldn’t be easy, but we’d work through it, together. We had to. Because finding his secret notebook didn’t destroy us. It tested us.
