“You’re going to tell me again,” Kai says softly. “Not on a voicemail. Not drunk. Not shaking on your couch pretending nobody hears you.”
The temperature in the room drops.
Or maybe my blood does.
“Next time, you’re going to say it when I’m standing in front of you.”
My lips part in a breath that doesn’t make it out.
“You’re going to look me in the eyes,” he continues, voice lowering, darkening, turning into something lethal, “and you’re going to give me the truth you’ve buried in your ribs since the night they took me.”
My knees buckle.
I slide down the cabinet until I’m sitting on the cold tile, hand still pressed to my chest, phone to my ear, tears blurring everything.
“And Scarlett?”
A beat.
A breath.
A promise.
“I’m not knocking next time.”
My pulse slams so violently my whole body shakes.
“You opened the door last night,” Kai murmurs, softer but colder, “when you called for me.”
A shudder rolls through me.
“You don’t get to close it now.”
Another heartbeat of silence follows.
“You taste the same,” he whispers, voice a razor sliding down my spine. “I’m not done proving it.”
The voicemail ends.
I sit on the cold floor, shaking uncontrollably, breath broken, heart thrashing like a trapped animal in my chest.
The phone slides out of my hand.
The locket thumps against my collarbone.
And the truth lands with suffocating clarity:
He’s already coming.
And whether I run or hide or scream—I’m the one who called him home.
The voicemail dies.
But the sound of him doesn’t.
It stays.
In the air.
