Page 66 of The Ache That Stayed

The same silence. The same disappearance. Back then I called until my battery died. Called until hope became humiliation. Until anger became easier than admitting he’d left.

And now here I was again, listening to the same fucking automated voice. Like some pathetic part of me still expected him to answer.

I bit the back of my forefinger to distract me from the bile that was starting to rise in my throat. Ritu insisted on driving me back to the cottage.

“Call me if you need backup,” she said as she pulled away.

I nodded, already distracted.

The cottage felt different in daylight without him. Too quiet. Too empty. I made coffee.

Then another.

And another.

By noon I had also eaten half a box of the chocolate biscuits Santino kept in the cupboard.

Stress eating. Fantastic.

I slammed the cupboard shut harder than necessary, the sound ricocheting in the empty kitchen. My phone slipped from my hand once, clattering against the table, my fingers trembling as I picked it up again.

I tried to distract myself.

I called Kyra. She spent ten minutes talking about her friends at school. Romano tried snatching Marcello’s phone twice, like it was his toy. Marcello asked about the site.

I answered automatically. Everything sounded normal until the call ended. And then the silence crept back in.

By late afternoon, my nerves had frayed into something sharp. I told myself Santino was fine. He’d dealt with trouble before. Dealt with them. He was probably caught up. Slept somewhere.

Except…

He hadn’t answered. Not once. Not after twenty-five calls—all of them straight to voicemail. And the countless messages, all of which went unanswered.

My phone sat uselessly on the table. A migraine blooming, making the vein in my forehead pulse.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Like a fucking time bomb waiting to explode.

I tried distracting myself by scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, then tried putting something on Netflix so that the silence would go away. Nothing helped.

By evening, the worry had twisted into anger. And now the ticking in my head had just gotten louder; every unanswered call sharpened it. My chest tightened, fear clawing at me, but anger rose hotter, swallowing it whole.

Fine.

If he wanted to disappear again, he could go ahead. I didn’t care.

I started pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Like if I stopped moving, everything inside me would crack open and spill everywhere. Biting the back of my finger didn’t help either.

Why should I be worried about him? He was repeating the pattern. Leaving. Disappearing. Like I was supposed to just… wait.

Marcello would say when patterns become predictable, you can anticipate the next step. With Santino, it was going MIA.

Fuck him.

I didn’t care if he lived, ran, or ended up dead in a ditch.