I’ve found another button.
“Leave me alone,” she says, her voice tight, strained.
“I don’t think I can do that,” I say, my voice dropping to a low, intimate murmur. “I think you and I are just getting started.”
Five
Aria
Hecallsmealiar, and something hot and sharp ignites in my chest.
It’s anger.
The feeling is so foreign, so archaic that it takes me a moment to identify it. It’s a burning, coiling thing, ugly and alive. For two years, my emotional landscape has been a frozen tundra, and he just struck a match. He stands there on the landing, blocking my path, cornering me in my own building, and he has the audacityto dissect me with his eyes, to tell me what I’m feeling as if he has any right.
The anger is a poison, and it’s a relief. It burns away the fog. For a split second, I’m not the ghost girl. I’m not the sister who failed. I am a girl trapped on a staircase by a boy who won’t leave her alone, and I hate him for it.
He sees it. Of course, he does. He sees everything. A slow, triumphant smile spreads across his face. It’s not the devastatingly beautiful one from the convenience store. This one is sharp and knowing. It says,There you are. I knew you were in there.
He’s won. He got the reaction he was hunting for.
“Leave me alone,” I say, and the words are tight, clipped. They tremble with the force of this new, unwelcome emotion.
“I don’t think I can do that,” he says, his voice a low, intimate murmur that crawls under my skin. “I think you and I are just getting started.”
Having achieved his goal, he does the last thing I expect. He takes a step back, moving aside and clearing the path up the stairs. He grants me the freedom to pass, a king bestowing a favor. The gesture is a power play, more controlling than him physically blocking me ever was. It says,You can go because I’m allowing it.
I don’t hesitate. I push past him, my shoulder brushing against the worn leather of his jacket. The contact is electric, a brief, hot shock that I feel all the way to my bones. I don’t look at him. I fix my eyes on the door to my apartment at the top of the stairs and I bolt, my footsteps echoing in the sudden silence.
I jam my key into the lock, my hands shaking so badly it takes two tries. The door swings open, and I slip inside, slamming it shut and throwing the deadbolt. The solid thunk of the lock sliding into place does nothing to make me feel safe.
I lean my back against the door, my chest rising and falling in ragged, shallow breaths. I’m home. I’m safe, but my sanctuary has been breached. He was right outside this door. He knows where I live, he can get to me whenever he wants.
The anger is still there, a hot coal in my sternum, but now it’s mingled with the fear I denied having. It’s a toxic, dizzying cocktail. I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor, my arms wrapped around my knees.
My apartment, once a haven of quiet neutrality, feels different. The silence isn’t peaceful anymore; it’s suffocating. It’s an absence. It’s the space where his voice just was. The beige walls feel like they’re closing in. This isn’t a fortress; it’s a cage.
I need to get back to the nothing, I need to extinguish this fire he started.
I get up and move through my evening routine on autopilot, hoping the familiar rhythm will soothe the chaos. I change my clothes, I wash my face, scrubbing at my skin as if I can wash the memory of his gaze off me. I sit on my mattress and try to meditate, focusing on my breath. In and out. A simple, biological process.
My mind refuses to be quiet. Every time I get close to the edge of the void, his face appears. His knowing smile, the fury, the pain and the startling, raw life in his eyes.
“I think you and I are just getting started.”
The words are a promise and a threat. They echo in the quiet of my room, and the anger flares again, hot and righteous.Who does he think he is? To hunt me down, to corner me, to pry me open just to see what’s inside?
I give up on sleep. I pace the small confines of my apartment like a caged animal. The restlessness is back, but it’s no longer a vague, humming thing. It’s a sharp, frantic energy. I feel trapped in my own skin.
For two years, my life has been governed by a single, overriding principle: avoid feeling. I built a fortress of numbness around the memory of Jade, and it has kept me safe. It has kept her memory pure, untouched by the messiness of a life I don’t deserve to live.
Cassian walked up to that fortress, and he didn’t even bother knocking. He just started swinging a sledgehammer.
And the most terrifying part?A part of me wants to let him. A dark, self-destructive part of me is leaning into the wrecking ball, curious to see what will happen when the walls come down.
The next day is impossible. I go to the library, but the silence is deafening. I can’t focus on the books. The stories feel like lies, neat little narratives with beginnings and endings. My story doesn’t have an ending. It’s a loop, a single, horrific moment playing over and over in a silent, empty room.
I re-shelve a book on Greek mythology and my fingers trace the name Cassian. I pull the book from the shelf, and flip through the index. There’s no entry. Of course there isn’t. The name itself feels ancient, mythical like a fallen angel or a forgotten god of chaos.
