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“I used up all my mercy on you years ago, and you wasted every drop of it.”

His smile completely vanished, replaced by the tight, petulant scowl I remembered all too well from our worst arguments.

“Look, I know I fucked up, but I still love—”

His voice abruptly cut off.

His eyebrows pinched together in sudden confusion. A harsh, dry cough tore out of his chest, bending him forward. He cleared his throat, holding up an index finger to signal for a pause.

“You good?” I asked.

“Yeah. Just... give me a second,” he wheezed, striking his sternum with a clenched fist.

Another violent cough ripped through his throat, rattling in his chest like he had inhaled a mouthful of cold dust. Chalis turned his head to the side, gagging slightly as his knuckles turned white against his designer jacket.

What the hell?

I frowned, stepping back into the foyer. “Are you choking?”

Chalis shook his head frantically, his face flushing dark red.

“No... shit...”

He swallowed hard, gasping for air like invisible fingers were pressing hard against his windpipe. He rubbed his neck with both hands, his chest heaving.

“What the fuck was that?”

“You tell me,” I said, just as confused. “You didn’t have a cold two seconds ago.”

“It felt like somebody reached down my throat and squeezed,” he muttered, his voice raspy and cracked.

Chalis took two deep, shuddering breaths, trying to regain his composure. He looked toward the ceiling of the porch, then peered uneasily past me into the quiet shadowed hall of the mansion.

The foyer behind me was dead silent. The air was noticeably cooler than it had been a minute ago, carrying that faint, unmistakable hum of static electricity that made the fine hairs on my arms stand straight up.

Chalis rubbed his throat once more, cleared the remaining rasp from his voice, and looked back at me with irritation bleeding through his embarrassment. “Anyway... like I was saying. You really moved your whole family into this nigga’s house?”

“Yes, Chalis. I did.”

“Damn.” He shook his head, a mean, dismissive sneer settling onto his mouth. “You still hung up on that ghost, huh?”

Every muscle in my body locked. “Watch your mouth.”

“What? I’m just stating facts,” Chalis pressed on, ignoring the warning in my voice. “It’s been six years, Lakelyn… six whole fucking years. If that nigga was coming back, he would’ve been here. He probably ended up in a ditch on the state line, and here you are turning down real men to play house in an empty mansion.”

My body moved on pure instinct.

SMACK!

The open-handed slap cracked through the quiet porch like a gunshot, snapping Chalis’s head sharply to the right.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Chalis slowly turned his face back toward me, his cheek blazing bright red and his eyes wide with stunned outrage. “Lakelyn... what the fuck?!”

“Don’t you ever come to this house and speak Caspian’s name like that again!” I said, my voice dropping into a low, lethal register that shook with pure fury.

He reached up, pressing trembling fingers against his stinging cheek. “Damn, you really smacked my ass.”