جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 20

Chapter Eleven — HollowRoseanne's POVI stared at my mother's text for three full seconds.Then I got out of the car.Elle reached for my arm. "Rose.""I have to go in.""I know. I'm just saying — you don't have to explain everything today. Not if you're not ready."I looked at her through the open car door. She was right and I knew she was right and it did not help at all. "I'll text you."I shut the door and walked up the driveway.My mother was in the kitchen. She was not doing anything — not making coffee, not looking at her phone. Just standing at the counter with her hands flat on the surface, facing the window. That was how I knew it was bad. My mother was never still."Sit down," she said without turning around.I sat at the kitchen table. My hands were in my lap and I pressed them together to keep them steady.She turned around. Her face was not angry. I almost wished it was. Anger I could push back against. What she had instead was something quieter and more complicated — a

Chapter Thirteen — ProxyElle's POVI read the text twice."You think you're protecting her. You're just making it worse. Back off or the rest of the pictures go to her father."Different number from the first unknown text. Same energy. Same goal. Jake was not done — he had just stopped using his own hands. Smart enough to create distance, stupid enough to think distance would protect him.I saved the screenshot and added it to the document. Noted the time, the number, the exact wording. Then I put my phone face-down on the table and finished making the kitchen clean because Roseanne was twenty minutes away and I wanted her to walk into something calm.The kettle clicked off. I poured two cups and sat down.My mind kept drifting to her. The way she had looked getting out of my car this morning — tired and braced, walking up that driveway like she was heading into something she could not avoid. The line of her shoulders. The way she had not looked back. I wanted to rewind the whole mor

Chapter Fifteen — AttachmentRoseanne's POVI pulled over.Not because I was thinking clearly. Because my hands had gone tight on the wheel and the street ahead had blurred slightly and I knew better than to keep driving like that.I put the car in park. Sat there with the engine running and the heater blowing and the unknown number sitting on my screen.The attachment was a photo. Not one of mine. It was a picture of Elle.Taken from a distance, through a window. Elle sitting at her kitchen table this morning, laptop open, head down. She had not known anyone was outside. Whoever took it had been standing in her front yard while she worked and she had not known.My chest went cold.I typed to Elle immediately. No explanation, just forwarded the image with the message underneath it. Thirty seconds passed. Then her name lit up my screen."I see it," she said when I picked up. Her voice was completely level. "Where are you?""Pulled over on Mercer. Two blocks from yours.""Stay there."T

Chapter Seventeen — WarmElle's POVShe was smiling at her plate.I knew because she sent me a voice note at nine fifteen, whispering from her bedroom, and I could sense the smile in her voice even before she said anything worth smiling about. She said her dad had come home and it had not gone the way she expected and she would tell me everything tomorrow and goodnight.I played it three times.Then I lay on my back on my bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the way she had looked in my doorway this evening. The porch light catching her face. The way she had not stepped out immediately, just stood there in the gap between staying and going. I had wanted to reach out and pull her back inside. Had wanted it badly enough that I had to consciously put my hands in my pockets.She was going to be the end of me.I got up eventually and went to check on my mother.Diane was asleep on the couch, properly this time — not passed out, just asleep. Blanket pulled up, television low. A g

Chapter Eighteen — PaperElle's POVThe note was still in her jacket pocket.I knew because she had not thrown it away, had not shown it to me, had not mentioned it once since she folded it back up and closed her locker. She had just carried it through the whole morning like it was something she was still deciding what to do with.That bothered me more than the note itself.We had two classes together on Mondays, third and fifth period. I watched her through both of them. She sat straight, answered when she was called on, wrote notes in her usual careful handwriting. From the outside she looked fine. I knew the difference between Roseanne fine and Roseanne actually fine. This was the first one.At lunch she found me before I found her, which was unusual. She sat down across from me at the far end of the courtyard, away from the main tables, and put her tray down without saying anything. I waited. She picked at her food for a minute."It said I should ask you what you did with the copi