Up.
Down.
Up again.
My breathing steadied, but my thoughts didn’t. Mason Sterling stayed in my head like a bruise that refused to fade. Old money families don’t wait three months unless someone is controlling the timeline.
Up.
twenty-two.
Down.
Missing three months. Old money families don’t wait three months unless something or someone is controlling the timeline. And that something sits wrong in my chest.
The bar presses into my palms, grounding me. My muscles strain, burning in a way that feels honest. I feel sweat slide down my spine, cold against my overheated skin.
I racked the bar harder than I meant to. Heads turned. I ignored them. The silence around Mason was wrong. People don’t go missing without noise. Not in families like his.
Next set. Pull-downs.
My lats engage, muscles tightening under the strain, back and shoulders working in rhythm. The movement should empty my head, but it doesn’t.
Instead, every repetition drags his back into focus. Not his photo, not his file, but the gap around his disappearance. The silence where panic should be. People don’t go missing like that without noise. Not in families like the Sterlings.
I pause mid-rep. The weight hangs for a second longer than it should. My jaw tightens, and I finish the set.
By the time I finished, sweat clung to my skin and the weight in my chest felt heavier than the iron in my hands.
Mason sits there still, unresolved, and still wrong in a way I can’t name yet. I set the dumbbells down, rolling my shoulders out as I exhale. Across the gym someone laughs too loudly, and life continues exactly as it should.
But it feels off, because somewhere in Seattle, a twenty-two-year-old man has been missing long enough for people to stop reacting to it like an emergency.
And someone has decided that’s acceptable.
I grab my towel and wipe my face, staring at nothing in particular. The thought lands again, heavier this time.
This wasn’t a missing person case. It was a decision someone was maintaining.
A strange heaviness settles low in my stomach, the kind that is warning me of a storm coming. I don’t know why or who, but I feel it.
Something is about to shift.
5
Eli
I sit in the hospital cubicle with the curtains drawn, looking at Marge. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears, her lashes clumping together even though she’s long past crying. Mine sting worse than I expected; the makeup I fought so hard to layer over everything has given up completely. There’s no hiding it now. Not from her. Not from anyone.
A tight pressure builds behind my eyes, the kind that warns a breakdown is close. My throat feels scraped raw, and my chest pulls tight like my ribs are trying to hold everything in place.
Marge has questions. I can see them forming behind her eyes, but she doesn’t speak them. She just holds them there, heavy and careful, like she’s afraid of what they might do if she lets them out.
Instead, she reaches for my hand and doesn’t let go.
Neither of us speaks. We don’t touch the obvious. Not yet. It’s too raw, too exposed, and entirely too close to breakingsomething neither of us knows how to fix. So we stay like that, holding on in silence, pretending it is enough.
A soft scratch at the curtain makes me flinch. My heart jumps hard enough to blur my vision, my shoulders tensing into an ingrained reflex I barely notice anymore. I wipe at my face too quickly, smearing what’s left of the makeup across my cheek.
