Chapter 42

The realization settled between them slowly.

Heavy.

Poisonous.

Keisha stared at Malik while her heartbeat thudded unevenly against her ribs.

“You think she’s right.”

Malik looked exhausted by the sentence before he even answered it.

“I think…”

He stopped.

Started again.

“I think people can damage each other enough to stop seeing reality clearly.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.”

Keisha watched him carefully.

Because he still wasn’t denying it.

And that terrified her more than the messages.

More than Alina.

More than the hidden files.

The apartment suddenly felt like a place where certainty went to die.

Another silence stretched between them.

Then quietly:

“What actually made you start believing her?”

Malik leaned back against the counter slowly.

His eyes drifted toward the window.

“Things repeated.”

Keisha frowned.

“What things?”

“Conversations.”

A pause.

“Arguments.”

Another.

“Specific phrases people said without knowing each other.”

The chill returned immediately.

Keisha crossed her arms tighter against herself.

“That could still be coincidence.”

“Yes.”

“But?”

Malik’s expression darkened slightly.

“Some of it wasn’t.”

She hated how calm he sounded saying that.

Like he’d crossed past fear a long time ago and landed somewhere worse.

Acceptance.

“What’s the worst one?” she asked quietly.

Malik hesitated.

For the first time since this conversation started, he genuinely looked reluctant to answer.

“Malik.”

He swallowed once.

“Alina used to leave me notes before arguments happened.”

Keisha’s stomach tightened.

“What kind of notes?”

“Predictions.”

The room fell silent again.

“She’d write down specific conversations before we had them.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I know.”

“But it happened?”

Malik looked at her directly now.

“Yes.”

Keisha shook her head immediately.

“No. There has to be another explanation.”

“She always said that too.”

The line unsettled her deeply.

“She?”

“Alina.”

Malik laughed once under his breath, bitter and tired.

“She spent months trying to prove she wasn’t losing her mind.”

That hit differently than Keisha expected.

Not because it made Alina seem sane.

Because it made her seem desperate.

The difference mattered.

Keisha sat down slowly on the couch.

“So what changed?”

Malik looked away briefly.

“One night she showed me something before it happened.”

Keisha waited.

“She told me I was going to get a call from my brother exactly seven minutes after we stopped arguing.”

A pause.

“I hadn’t spoken to him in almost a year.”

The apartment felt colder with every sentence.

“And?”

Malik’s jaw tightened.

“My phone rang seven minutes later.”

Keisha stared at him.

“You could’ve checked the time wrong.”

“I thought that too.”

“But?”

“She wrote the exact sentence he was going to say first.”

Silence.

Real silence.

The kind that changes atmosphere.

Keisha’s brain kept trying to reject the story while another part of her remembered the messages.

The timing.

The observation.

The impossible specificity.

“No,” she whispered more to herself than him.

Malik nodded faintly.

“That was basically my reaction too.”

Keisha rubbed both hands against her face slowly.

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it still doesn’t.”

The honesty in that answer made everything worse.

If he sounded delusional, this would be easier.

But he sounded rational.

Careful.

Like someone terrified of his own conclusions.

Another vibration broke through the room.

This time both of them flinched.

Malik picked the phone up immediately.

His face hardened the second he read the screen.

“What?” Keisha asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Malik.”

Slowly, he turned the screen toward her.

You never tell them about the predictions until they start noticing them too.

Keisha felt her pulse stumble.

Because deep down—

She already had started noticing things.

The repeated phrases.

The emotional timing.

The way conversations seemed to circle back into themselves.

She hated that thought instantly.

“No.”

Malik took the phone back quietly.

“She does this.”

“What?”

“She plants doubt.”

Keisha looked at him sharply.

“You mean like you just did for the last twelve hours?”

That hit him immediately.

She saw it.

The guilt.

The realization.

Because he had done exactly that.

Introduced uncertainty slowly enough that reality started feeling unstable around the edges.

Keisha stood abruptly.

“I need air.”

Malik straightened instantly.

“Keisha—”

“I’m not leaving.”

Not yet.

The fact that she mentally added those last two words frightened her.

She grabbed her hoodie from the chair near the door.

Malik moved closer carefully now.

“She wants isolation.”

Keisha looked at him.

“What?”

“She always pushed people toward emotional dependence first.”

The line lingered.

Because part of Keisha suddenly wondered if that applied to him too.

If maybe this entire apartment had become a closed system of fear and reinforcement long before she arrived.

The thought hit hard enough to make her chest tighten.

Malik noticed the shift in her expression instantly.

And for the first time since she met him—

He looked scared she might stop believing him completely.

Not emotionally.

Existentially.

“Keisha,” he said quietly, “I need you to trust your own judgment right now.”

That sentence should’ve comforted her.

Instead it terrified her.

Because she no longer knew if her judgment was still fully hers.