Chapter 49
KAI
He wasn’t at lunch.
He wasn’t in the corridors.
He wasn’t in any of the classes we shared.
Every room I walked into, every doorway I checked, every crowd I scanned - nothing.
His text message kept ringing in my head like an alarm I couldn’t shut off.
See you at school tomorrow.
But he wasn’t here.
And the longer the day dragged on, the louder that sentence became, like it was mocking me. Like it knew something I didn’t.
My stomach twisted tighter with every empty seat, every missed glance, every moment where I expected to see him leaning against a wall or tucked behind a book or pretending not to notice me.
But there was nothing. Just absence. Just silence.
By the time the bell rang for last period, my chest felt too tight, my thoughts too loud. I kept telling myself he was fine, that he’d just overslept or come down sick or decided to skip.
But the truth was sitting heavy in my gut.
Something wasn’t right. And I knew it. I’d known it since last night.
And now the empty spaces he should’ve been filling were starting to feel like warnings.
When the bell rang for the end of school, I didn’t even pretend to take my time. I practically sprinted to my car. The second I shut the door, before I even touched the ignition, I called him.
It rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And then - he answered.
“Hello?” Alex said, like I was the last person he expected to hear from. But god, I was so relieved to hear it that my chest actually loosened.
“Hi…” I said, suddenly awkward. Part of me hadn’t expected him to pick up, and now that he had, every question I’d rehearsed evaporated. I knew what I wanted to ask - about yesterday, about his brother - but I’d already pushed him too far once.
I wasn’t going to risk doing it again.
“You weren’t in school today,” I said instead, stating the obvious like an idiot.
“I’m sick,” he said flatly.
“Oh,” I breathed. “Okay.”
A beat of silence.
Too long.
Too heavy.
“I have to go,” he finally said. “Please stop texting and calling me.”
My stomach dropped. “Why?”
But he’d already hung up.
The line went dead, and for a moment I just sat there, phone pressed to my ear, staring at nothing. The world outside the windshield blurred, like I’d forgotten how to blink.
He didn’t even give me a chance to speak.
Didn’t explain.
Didn’t soften it.
Just stop texting and calling me.
The words echoed, sharp and wrong, settling in my chest like something I wasn’t meant to hear.