LOGINEverything moved pretty fucking fast after that night—like someone had hit fast-forward on the worst parts of our lives and forgotten to give us the remote. One minute we were all sitting in the living room bleeding out our secrets, the next the house was full of cardboard boxes, packing tape screeching across seams, and the kind of quiet conversations that happen when nobody really wants to be heard. Mom threw herself into organizing like it was therapy, labeling shit with Sharpie in that neat handwriting she always used for grocery lists: “Kitchen—pots & pans,” “Fragile—photo albums.” While Jake wandered around hauling boxes to the garage for the moving truck that would show up in three days. Dad mostly stayed in his study with the door closed, the faint clink of a bottle against glass the only proof he was still breathing in there.And the morning they left? The sky was that flat gray that made everything look washed out and tired. The moving truck idled in the driveway, exhaus
The words landed like a brick through glass. My mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Just air. Just the sudden, hollow rush of understanding why the house had felt wrong for months, why Dad had been sleeping on the couch more nights than in their bed, why Mom’s smiles never reached her eyes anymore.“You’re… what?” My voice cracked on the last word, sounding younger than I’d sounded in years.“We’ve been trying to figure it out,” Mom continued, words tumbling faster now like she needed to get them out before she lost her nerve. “We’ve been in counseling for almost a year. We thought we could fix it, that we could wait until you graduated, until things settled down. But after Camila… after everything… it just became clear we can’t keep pretending. We’re hurting each other more by staying together. And we’re hurting you kids by dragging it out.”Counseling for a year??!I could stop the ugly bark of laughter that slipped from my mouth.“You’ve been in counseling for a year? A
I stared into the steam rising from my tea, watching it curl and dissolve, trying to force my brain to focus on something normal. “Tessa, can you hear me?” Mom’s voice cut through the fog, soft but insistent, the way she spoke when she was trying not to startle me. I blinked hard, tea sloshing against the rim of the mug. “What?” I asked, startled enough that my shoulders jerked. “What did you say?” She was sitting on the armchair across from me, knees pressed together, hands clasped so tight her knuckles were white. Jake hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, arms crossed, looking like he wanted to disappear into the wallpaper. Mom took a careful breath. “What do you think about us moving? After your final exams.” Moving out? I felt my whole body go rigid, mug trembling in my hands until hot tea splashed over the edge and burned my thumb. I set it down on the coffee table a little too fast and the liquid pooled around the base. “What?!” “It’s a nice place, I promise,” sh
I spun so fast my hood fell back, snow flying off like confetti as my heart slammed against my ribs. I was ready to swing and scream… until I saw his face. Jake. Breathless, cheeks flushed from running, hair sticking up in wet spikes under his beanie. “Jesus, Tess, where the hell have you been?” His voice cracked on the last word, lower than usual, rough from shouting or cold or both. He didn’t let go right away, fingers tight around my sleeve like he was afraid I’d vanish if he did. “I’ve been driving around for an hour looking for you. Mom’s losing her mind.” I yanked my arm free, the sudden motion making my shoulder twinge. I rubbed the spot where his grip had been, more out of habit than pain, and let out a long, shaky sigh that fogged the air between us. “I’m fine,” I muttered, even though the words tasted like a lie. “I just… needed to walk.” “You needed to walk for three fucking hours? In a snowstorm? Without answering your phone?” He ran a hand through his hair, snowflak
“She’d look over her shoulder when we were walking home from school,” I went on, voice cracking a little. “Like she expected someone to be following us. Wouldn’t tell me what. Said she couldn’t. That it was better if I didn’t know. I pushed, Miles. I pushed so fucking hard, but she just hugged me and said, ‘I dont want to drag you into this. You don’t understand how messy it is.’ I thought she was being dramatic.”My hands were shaking now, not just from the cold.I pressed them against my thighs to stop it. “And then she was gone. Her, her mom, her dad, Ethan. The house empty like they’d never lived there. And yet the police act like it’s a cold case already. Like four people don’t matter enough to keep looking.”I finally turned my head toward him to find his face pale under the hood, glasses catching the faint orange from the distant streetlight. He looked… wrong. Frozen. Like I’d just dropped something heavy on him and he didn’t know how to pick it up.“When did she go missing?
The figure stopped dead, like a deer caught in headlights. Then a voice, cracking a little on the edges, floated over the snow.“Shit—sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He took a half-step back, palms up in that universal I’m-harmless gesture. “I thought nobody came out here anymore. Especially not… uh… alone. At night. In January.”I squinted through the falling snow, trying to make him out. Skinny. Tallish but slouched like he was trying to disappear into his own shoulders with big square glasses that reflected the faint light. Messy dark hair sticking out from under the hood and a backpack slung over one shoulder, straps worn thin. Definitely not one of the usual suspects who haunted this place. He looked like he belonged in a library, not on abandoned train tracks.Still, I didn’t relax. “What the hell are you doing here then?” I snapped. “You following me or something?”“No! God, no.” He shook his head fast, snow flying off the brim of his hood. “I come here sometimes.
He nudged the bathroom door open with his shoulder. The moment the door shut behind us, I was met with the cool, earthy scent of eucalyptus soap. The bathroom was lit up by a soft wall sconce, casting a golden glow over the stone tile and deep, clawfoot bathtub. I blinked at the sudden change i
I knew I said I would do it again… But not immediately after. Like… there should be a grace period, right? Some sort of “cooling off” phase where I could get my heart to stop pounding. I needed at least a little time to remember how to breathe without the sound of his voice making my skin flu
Outside, wind rustled the trees, brushing softly against the cabin walls. Inside, the air was thick with heat. The scent of blood still clung to the space between us, earthy and metallic. But under it, I could smell him—his skin, his warmth, something deeper and more primal that made my stomach t
I think I died. I had to have. There was no other explanation for the way I couldn’t move a single part of my body. Not my arms, not my legs, not even my freaking toes. I was a lump. A limp, pathetic, soulless noodle who had given up on life and decided to melt straight into the damn couch cush







