“It’s my father.”
There’s a sound on the other end of the line. Soft. Jagged. Almost swallowed by the static. It’s so unfamiliar, so alien to me, that it takes a moment for my brain to catch up.
Hayes iscrying.
Hayes doesn’t cry. Not since we were kids. And even then, he usually tried to hide it.
I sit upright, ice flooding my veins.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Something inside me already knows this is one of those moments that splits a life cleanly in two. Before and after. I can feel the certainty settling deep in my gut, heavy and inevitable, like the world has tilted off its axis. Whatever comes next will change everything.
And… I’m not ready.
I want to hit pause. Stop. Rewind. Go back in time.
But I know we can’t.
“He’sdead,” Hayes says, voice splintering into a million pieces. “My father is dead.”
Ican’t stop thinking about Hayes’s father in the days that follow.
I know the world is vast and unpredictable and that people die every day, but until now, death has always felt abstract. Something that only existed in news headlines or on movie screens. Distant. Impersonal. The kind of thing that happened to other people, in other lives. Never like this.
This wasn’t supposed to happen tous.
Death is supposed to come later. After college. After marriage. After kids. When we’re older and worn down by time. When we’re parents ourselves. It’s not supposed to arrive when we’re barely stepping into adulthood.
It feels like I’ve lost something forever, something I didn’t even realize I had. Some quiet piece of innocence I’ll never get back. The world seems tilted sideways, like one of those carnival fun houses lined with warped mirrors, everything bent and unfamiliar. Nothing looks quite right anymore, and I don’t know how to move through life the way I used to.
Most nights, I end up crying into my pillow. Small, muffled sounds, like a private confession. Which is strange, because I wasn’t even all that close to Hayes’s father.
The man was always busy, always on the move. Important. Out of reach.
I saw him mostly at family dinners or big events, like Hayes’s birthday parties and holiday gatherings. Even when he let me ride his horses or joined me in the ring, he was quiet, often somewhere else in his mind.
Still, he was the only father figure I’ve ever really known.
Perhaps that’s why the grief hits deeper than I expected. Maybe it’s not just the man himself I’m mourning, but the idea of him. The permanence he seemed to represent. Stability and power.
Aidan Vassilios was larger than life. He felt untouchable. If someone like that can disappear in the blink of an eye, then it’s proof the world can change at any minute, without any warning.
No one—not even the strongest of us—is safe.
Apparently, it was a freak car accident. A truck veered into oncoming traffic and hit his luxury sedan head-on. Both Hayes’s father and his driver were killed on impact.
I had to hear all of this secondhand from Amber.
According to my sister, the funeral was held in Athens, where Hayes’s father was buried alongside generations of relatives in their ancestral cemetery. Hayes and Kora flew back to California shortly after to settle his father’s estate, though no one knows how long they’ll stay here. With his father gone, the family business needs Hayes more than ever. Another trip to Greece—a final, permanent one—feels inevitable.
It’s hard not to be upset that Amber is the only one Hayes is confiding in. More than anything, I wantto be the person Hayes leans on right now. Except he won’t let me. He’s shut me out completely.
He won’t answer any of my calls or texts. Mom says his behavior is normal and that I should give him space. That people grieve in different ways and I shouldn’t take it personally, because death can make people act strangely, even pull away. Especially when it’s this sudden and shocking.
Fine, okay. I get that.
I just don’t understand why he’s sharing everything withher—his grief, his plans—while I’m left in the dark.
