My phone buzzes on the counter.
I freeze.
Not because I don’t know who it is.
Because I do.
The screen lights up, bright and unforgiving.
No name.
No number saved.
Just a single message preview.
Did he read them?
My lungs seize.
I don’t pick it up.
I can’t.
The phone buzzes again, slower this time. Patient.
I told you he would.
Tears spill over before I can stop them. I slide down the cabinet again, my back hitting the wood, my knees pulled tight to my chest like I’m trying to fold myself small enough to disappear.
This is how it starts.
This is how it always starts.
Noah tightening the walls.
Kai slipping through the cracks.
I press my forehead to my knees, breathing in shallow, broken pulls.
“I didn’t answer you,” I whisper, even though he can’t hear me. “I never answered.”
The phone buzzes a third time.
You didn’t have to.
That’s when the panic really hits.
Because he’s right.
He never needed my reply.
The letters weren’t a conversation. They were a countdown.
I think about the way Noah looked at me—like something that needed to be secured, managed, hidden.
I think about the way Kai writes—like he already knows how this ends.
My hands curl into fists.
