Dante comes home at 9:14. His bag lands by the door. He walks into the kitchen, drops his keys on the counter, and looks at me, and I look at him.
"How was film?" I ask.
"Productive. Addison wants to adjust the neutral zone entries."
"Maya's recommendation."
"Maya's recommendation." He opens the fridge, takes out the water, and drinks standing up, efficient and functional the way he always does. "Where is she?"
"Spare room. She went up early."
He nods, puts the water back, and walks past me toward the stairs. His hand brushes my shoulder as he passes, the briefcontact, the nightly ritual, two fingers against the same spot they always find.
His footsteps go up the stairs, heavy and announcing. Past the spare room, the pause is there, the half-second where his stride breaks outside her door as he listens for the breathing count. The blanket, the jersey, the sticky note, and now the nightly pause stack up in the hallway. His breathing goes shallow. His weight settles. He stays there long enough that the floorboard creaks twice under the same foot. Then his door closes.
Three people. Three doors. My mouth still tastes like her.
Maya's breathing count starts at the end of the hall.Four in, four hold, four out.I count with her through the wall, in the dark.
Three cycles. Then quiet.
Chapter 18
Maya
The music cuts off at 8:17, and every drunk person in Elm House realizes at once that the party is over.
One second, bass is shaking the floorboards hard enough to rattle the glass in the window beside me. The next, feedback shrieks through the speakers, the room jolts, and Adrian’s voice cuts through the chaos from somewhere near the fireplace.
“Out. Everyone out. Elm House is closed.”
Complaints ripple first. Then confusion. Then laughter from people too drunk to understand the atmosphere has shifted. Dante and Cole move into the entrance, shoulder to shoulder, both of them silent, arms crossed, taking up the doorway like they measured it before they stepped into it.
The laughter dies faster after that.
I stand near the window with Genny, my bag pressed against my hip, the envelope sealed in the zippered compartment exactly where my hand can find it without looking. Ten days since it appeared on my floor, and I still carry it everywhere because leaving it anywhere else makes my skin crawl worse than the weight of it against me.
My phone buzzes.
The 413 number.
I delete the call without looking at the duration. He calls. I delete. My thumb stays steady on the screen. My grip locks around the phone until the edge bites into my palm.
Genny’s eyes flick to my hand.
I turn the phone face down and look back at the room.
The last of the party spills through the front door in a rush of boots, perfume, beer breath, and offended whispers. Gio Santoro’s name moves through the air in fragments. Whisperer. Report. Killer. Rylan Vance. Somebody says sealed record near the hallway, and Adrian’s head snaps in that direction hard enough to make the freshman shut up mid-sentence.
Thirty minutes ago, Gio came through this party like something feral because Zoë had spent the evening ignoring him with surgical precision. He found her on the staircase landing, grabbed her wrist, and dragged her upstairs before anyone in the room had time to decide whether stopping him would make things better or worse.
Zoë went with him.
Her spine was straight. Chin up. Her eyes stayed on Gio the whole way.
I saw the moment she chose to go with him. The moment she took his momentum and turned it into a door she could close behind them.
Now the party is gone, and the people left behind understand what happens when Zoë clears a room.
