I stepped closer. “You don’t get to operate around her without telling me.”
His expression remained steady. “I am not operating around her. I am ensuring that whoever initiated contact understands there will be consequences if it happens again.” A brief pause. “For now, it has stopped.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t like the way he said that. I left the house and drove straight to Mila’s.
I needed to talk to her. Not over the phone. Not through a text. In front of me.
The message had been deliberate. And whoever had done it wouldn’t stop after one attempt.
The threat wasn’t random. Which meant the next move wouldn’t be either. And this time, I wasn’t certain we would see it coming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MILA
The beach was almost empty that morning, with the tide pulled back far enough to leave a long stretch of damp sand gleaming beneath a pale, undecided sky. The quiet felt different from the constant tension at school. Here at the shoreline, everything moved slower, untouched by whatever was unraveling back at campus.
Avery walked beside me with her shoes hooked loosely through her fingers, coffee in the other hand, sweatshirt sleeves pulled down over her knuckles. I had mine wrapped the same way. The air carried salt and the faint promise of warmth later in the day.
For a little while, we talked about nothing important.
About how graduation suddenly felt closer than it had any right to. About housing forms and whether dorm life would feel claustrophobic after growing up with ocean air. About how strange it would be to live somewhere that snowed. About how the water always shifted color when the tide changed, as if the whole shoreline had moods.
It felt almost normal. Almost. Normal had become a narrow window we stepped into carefully.
Avery was the one who broke the calm we’d been holding onto.
“There are bags under your eyes. You’re still reliving what happened,” she said quietly, not looking at me.
“Yes.” She didn’t have to clarify she meant Logan. With the mention of the attack, the tension threaded through our fragile peace.
She exhaled slowly. “The timing doesn’t sit right.”
I watched the waves roll in and dissolve against the sand. I knew exactly what she was talking about. We’d both seen her in the hallway, and that fact haunted me. “No. It doesn’t.”
“Elise knew you were alone.”
The words settled between us without heat. They didn’t need it.
“I saw her outside the art room,” I admitted. “She looked right at me. There was no question.”
We walked a few more steps, the waves rolling in and out, crashing against the rocks.
Avery exhaled quietly. “I’m glad I texted Luke.”
I glanced at her.
“I almost didn’t,” she continued. “I told myself you’d be fine. That I was overreacting. But something felt off.”
The words hung between us.
“It makes me sick,” she added quietly, “thinking about what could’ve happened if I hadn’t.”
I stopped walking. The image rose uninvited—Logan looming over me. His hands on me. “He would have come anyway.” Even as I said it, doubt pressed in. The timing had been too precise, and Elise had seen me in the art room. She had to have hung back and seen Avery leave. We started moving again, slower now.
“She didn’t just know you were alone,” Avery said. “She knew Logan wasn’t where he was supposed to be.”
I looked at her fully. “You think she told him not to go to practice?”