The room was quiet. Too quiet.
“Kate?”
Nothing. I moved further in. The sofa cushions were neatly plumped. My hoodie still slung over the back of the chair.
But her shoes? Gone.
Those beat-up New Balances she wore nearly every day? Not by the door. Not anywhere.
My chest went tight.
I set the coffees down, carefully. Like if I moved too fast, something might shatter. I checked the bedroom next. I pushed open the door and stood there for a second.
The drawers were all open, even mine, but hers were…empty.
Her side of the bathroom counter, cleared. The moisturiser she used every night, gone. That scuffed little pink makeup bag, gone. Even the claw clip she always left next to the sink, gone.
I backed out of the room like I’d been physically struck. Like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the middle of my chest. My head spun round the room looking for a note, a message, anything. But there was nothing.
I grabbed my phone with shaking hands. Not even a text. I fumbled for her contact, called her. Straight to voicemail. Called again. Same thing.
“Fuck,” I choked.“Fuck!”
Everything hit me at once; the room started to spin. I just knew that if I didn’t speak to her soon, if I didn’t hear her voice, I was going to completely collapse. I didn’t know where she was, if she was safe, if she was okay.
Gwen. My hands were trembling. I couldn’t find her number fast enough.
She picked up on the second ring. “Jordan?”
“She’s gone,” I said, my voice raw. “Gwen…she’s not here. I don’t know where she…”
I heard her draw a breath. “She’s on her way home,” she saidgently. “She messaged me from the airport. She’s going back to Cardiff.”
The ground tilted. I dropped into the nearest chair like my legs had given out.
“Jordan…what happened?” Gwen asked, quieter now.
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t speak for a moment. Then it finally came out.
“I overheard her on the phone…with her mum. Talking about maybe going back. I…I fucking lost it, Gwen. I told her she was clinging to a life that gave her nothing. That her job made her miserable. That her husband left her.”
My throat closed around the next part. Shame flooding through me.
“I just unleashed…like she was nothing.”
Gwen was silent on the line, but I could feel her disappointment through the phone.
“Youwhat?” she asked sharply.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said quickly. Desperately. “I was spiralling. After the match, I…I didn’t know who I was. I felt like I was falling apart, and she was trying to help, and I just…” My voice broke—no, shattered. “I lashed out. I didn’t know how to hold it all, and she caught the worst of it.”
Gwen didn’t say anything for a moment.
Then her tone changed into something harder.
“Do you even know what she went through before she met you?”
I blinked, my heart pounding. “I…what?”
