“That’s not what this is,” I say, though even to my own ears it sounds insufficient.
“It was,” she replies.
There’s no argument left to make.
“You don’t get to decide when I become real,” she says, her voice steady despite the instability in her scent. “You don’t get to upgrade me from a bet to serious because it got complicated. Or because biology did.”
She takes a slow breath. “I need space. I’m going home. Donotfollow me.”
None of us try to stop her.
The front door closes with a sound that echoes far louder than it should.
Kai exhales slowly. Koa stares at the ground. Sol’s expression remains unreadable.
And I stand there with the clarity of two brutal truths settling in my chest.
She was the girl from the beach.
And I let her walk away.
Twice.
This isn’t a miscalculation.
It’s catastrophic damage.
And I don’t know if she’ll give me the chance to repair it.
THIRTY-NINE
LANI
The house smellslike lavender and old paper and the faint, comforting trace of furniture polish that I suspect my grandmother has used for decades.
It should feel safe. Itdoesfeel safe. But…that’s the problem.
The moment I close the door behind me and lean my back against it, I expect relief to settle in. I expect distance to bring clarity. I expect anger to hold steady, sharp and righteous and protective.
Instead, something inside me begins to unravel.
The silence is too complete. Too clean. There’s no undercurrent of smoke or salt threading through the air, no subtle layering of warmth beneath it. No shifting energy in the walls. Just stillness.
My chest tightens.
I tell myself it’s humiliation. Betrayal. But I think it’s something else entirely….something I don’t want to examine too closely. Not when everything feels so raw.
I replay the terrace in sharp fragments – Finn’s face when he realised I was the girl from the beach party, Kai’s silence whenI called him out, Koa’s flinch when I said I trusted him. I cling to the anger because it’s easier than the hollow ache spreading slowly beneath it.
But the ache grows.
It doesn’t feel emotional at first. It feels physical. A restless pull beneath my ribs, low and insistent. My skin prickles like I’ve stepped out into cold air without a coat. I move through the house without purpose – touching the back of chairs, straightening nothing, opening windows I don’t need open – trying to outrun the sensation building under my skin.
It doesn’t work.
By mid-afternoon the hum has sharpened into something closer to an ache. Notheat– which means something completely different to me now than it did last week. Not the sharp, flaring spark Kai ignites. Not the grounding steadiness Sol brings. Not the quiet alignment I felt in Koa’s kiss. Not the deep, balanced calm that settled when Finn touched my arm that morning.
All of it.