I reached for my phone without thinking and brought up the thread with Luka. Still nothing since Monday morning. I stared at the blinking cursor.
Then I started typing.
Flying off the rails over here.
Delete.
Welp, if this were a game of chess, I just sacrificed my queen.
Delete, delete, delete.
I should have listened. I’m sorry.
Backspace. Gone.
All that was left—the only thing that felt true—was simple.
You were right.
Send.
chapter
twenty-six
White frost painted the grass and fence posts, glittering under the first rays of dawn.
The park was empty except for a grizzled groundskeeper chain-smoking by the playground.
I ran. Or tried to.
My lungs still burned from two hours of swimming laps, each inhale like a frosted knife. My hands throbbed from gripping the rough concrete pool edge.
I didn’t care. I ran anyway, across brittle grass, scuffed tennis shoes biting at the patchy ice.
Every step was punishment.
Every step was reprieve.
I looped the path twice, then cut onto a side trail, frost-stiff thistles snapping underfoot. Only when I reached the fence—where the park gave way to a tangle of bare trees—did I stop.
I bent over, hands on my knees, and spat bile into the grass.
After a full minute, I straightened, vision tunneling, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. The red marks on my wrists had finally faded. Pain shrieked through my calves as I walked, but I welcomed it. I started back toward my car, onehand pressed to my ribs, the other wrapped around the phone that hadn’t buzzed in days.
Three days.
I’d sent Luka a single message, the only true thing left:
You were right.
Nothing. No line of dots. No read receipt.
Even Mom had stopped texting. After a barrage of “Are you okay?” and “Call me,” she’d gone quiet—waiting for me to emerge from whatever cave I’d crawled into.
The air shifted.
A ripple of oxygen. A pressure change. The faint electric prickle of being watched.