30
Jade
Jade was halfway through geometry and already considering arson a reasonable response to math when her phone buzzed against the kitchen table.
The workbook sat open beneath the warm overhead light, formulas blurring after too long staring at them.
Garlic and onion drifted from the stove while her mom moved through the familiar rhythm of making dinner, steady enough that the apartment should have felt safe.
It almost did. Then Jade looked at the screen.
Unknown Number
Unknown: You looked real happy today.
Her chest tightened. She flipped the phone facedown too quickly, nearly clipping her water glass, and the sharp little noise brought her mother’s attention over from the stove. “You okay?”
Jade picked up her pencil even though she had no idea which problem she had been working. “Yeah.”
Lila watched her for another beat, concern already sharpening. “You sure?”
“Just tired.” The lie came easier than Jade liked.
Her mom turned back to dinner, but Jade could still see the tension in her shoulders.
Lately there had been too much of it. Grandpa furious about Deacon.
Uncle Matty making everything worse. The move.
Family day. Whatever weird emotional weather moved through the apartment whenever Deacon and her mom occupied the same room.
Jade had no desire to add creepy texts to the pile.
The phone buzzed again. She waited until Lila’s attention returned to the stove, then checked the screen beneath the edge of the table.
Unknown: Thought your biker daddy was gonna make everything better?
Her mouth went dry. That wasn’t random anymore. Whoever sent it knew about Deacon, and lately the messages had been getting sharper, meaner, more personal. Jade locked the screen and shoved the phone into her lap, but when she looked up, her mother had stopped pretending not to notice.
By the time Lila spoke again, concern had sharpened into certainty. “Jade.”
She looked up too fast. “What?” The speed of it gave her away more than she wanted.
Her mother’s expression softened around the worry. “Baby, are you sure you’re alright?”
For one second, Jade almost handed over the phone. That would have been the smart thing. It would also pile one more disaster onto a woman who already looked one bad day away from breaking something. “Yeah. Just school stuff.”
Lila clearly didn’t believe her, but she let it go. “Dinner’s almost done.”
“Okay.” Jade bent over the workbook again, but the numbers might as well have been another language. Her heartbeat refused to settle, and the phone in her lap felt heavier than it should.
When it buzzed a third time, dread hit before she even looked. She checked the screen carefully and saw Cage’s name instead of another unknown number. Relief left her shaky enough to be embarrassing. She answered immediately. “Hey.”
The relief in Jade’s voice must have been obvious, because Lila glanced over immediately. “Who’s that?”
“Cage.” Jade gathered her phone and schoolbook, grateful for an excuse to leave the kitchen without making it obvious she needed to. “I’m gonna go finish in my room.”
Her mother’s mouth twitched. “You mean talk instead of doing geometry?”
Jade made a face, grateful for the ordinary teasing. “That too.”
Her mother let her escape with one last reminder. “Dinner in fifteen.”
“Okay.” She shut herself into her bedroom and sat cross-legged on the bed, the tightness in her chest finally easing enough to breathe through.
Cage’s dry voice came through the phone, familiar enough now to loosen something in her chest. “You alive?”
She smiled despite herself. “Barely. Geometry is trying to kill me.”
“Yeah, well, algebra tried that with me last year. I survived, but I’ve never been the same.”
The dry delivery pulled a laugh out of her before she could stop it. “How tragic,”
His tone turned solemn enough to make the joke even worse. “I’m very brave.”
“Clearly.” The knot in her stomach loosened a little more. That was the thing about Cage. He never pushed too hard. He showed up in that steady, dry way of his and somehow made everything feel less jagged without acting like he was trying.
They talked about school, the weirdness of being the new girl at Bay of Saints High, teachers who acted like teenagers had unlimited free time, and group projects designed to punish the competent.
Cage told her about a guy from last year who had done absolutely nothing except announce, “I’m more of an ideas person,” whenever the teacher checked on them.
The conversation drifted into music and the ridiculous expectation that sixteen-year-olds should already know what they wanted to do with their lives.
Somewhere along the way, Jade almost stopped thinking about the unknown number.
Cage mentioned that one of the neighborhood kids had tried riding a bike down the apartment stairs earlier, nearly giving Ledger a heart attack. Jade laughed. “I’d have paid money to see that.”
“He did the whole disappointed dad stare mixed with angry biker glare.”
She could picture it far too easily. “That’s scarier than yelling.”
“Way scarier.” The laughter faded into something easier, the kind of conversation that didn’t need much work to keep moving.
Jade rolled onto her stomach and tucked a pillow under her chest. “Evan spent like fifteen minutes last night giving a dramatic speech about how my mom is doomed now that Deacon decided to become emotionally persistent.”
Cage laughed, quieter than hers but real. “He’s probably not wrong.”
Jade tipped her forehead into the pillow. “You sound way too calm saying that.”
“Deacon doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who quits something he cares about, and it is obvious he cares about you and your mom.”
That softened something in her before she could defend against it. “No,” she said, then admitted the rest. “He really definitely doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.” The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It felt more like both of them had noticed the same truth and were leaving it alone.
The easy rhythm between them held until Cage’s voice softened. “You okay?”
Coming from him, the question landed differently. He would actually wait for the answer. “Yeah.” He did exactly that, leaving the quiet open instead of filling it for her, until pretending stopped feeling useful. “Mostly,” she admitted.
“My dad says that too,” Cage said after a beat. “Mostly. Usually when he means not really.”
A faint laugh escaped her. “That sounds like Ledger.”
“Yeah.” The humor thinned from his voice. “He’s been... off a lot lately.” The change in him was subtle, but Jade heard it clearly enough to go still.
For a second he seemed to weigh whether to say more. Then his voice dropped. “Ever since my mom died, it’s just been weird, harder maybe.”
The words were quiet, but grief carried through them anyway. Jade curled tighter around the phone. “Cage...”
He exhaled into the line. “Yeah.” She wished she knew the right thing to say and understood there probably wasn’t one. “I don’t know…I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
His answer came just as softly. “Me too.” There was no anger in it, only a tiredness that made Jade wish she could do more than offer words through a phone.
Jade traced the seam of her comforter with her thumb. “I don’t really know what to say. But... if you ever want to talk about her, or about anything, I’m here. I mean that.”
The pause that followed felt less guarded than the ones before it. “That means a lot.” Cage hesitated before adding, “Thanks.”
Maybe that was why Jade found herself saying more than she had planned.
“I think maybe that’s why it feels weird when people are gone.
Not just because they’re gone. Because everything around them changes shape too.
I didn’t know my dad, so I couldn’t miss him the way you miss somebody you remember.
But I think I still felt the space where he should’ve been.
My mom did too, even if she never said it.
And now that he’s here, it’s like something in the air around her settles when he’s close.
They’re still a mess, obviously, but... I don’t know.
They make sense together. Like the shape of things feels less wrong when he’s in it. ”
“Yeah,” Cage said quietly. “Exactly.” Hearing him understand without needing her to explain it twice eased something in her.
Not all of it. Enough. She could hear movement somewhere on his end, home sounds in the background, and for a few seconds it felt oddly intimate to know he was somewhere ordinary while she sat in her room saying things she hadn’t said to anyone else.
Cage let the quiet breathe before turning the question back on her. “What about you?”
Jade stilled. “What about me?” She knew exactly what he meant, which only made the question harder to answer.
“You sound like you’ve got something sitting heavy on you too.”
Her fingers tightened around the phone. The unknown texts flashed through her mind alongside the strange pressure of Deacon suddenly being part of her life and how family day had managed to feel confusing and good at the same time. “It’s just... stuff,” she said after a minute.
He heard the dodge for what it was. “Family stuff?”
“Kind of.” Even that small admission made the phone seem heavier in her hand.
Cage didn’t press. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I know.” That was exactly why talking to him felt easy. He never made her feel stupid or too young, never demanded every piece of the explanation before believing what she felt. With him, she could just be.
His voice came quieter when he asked, “You wanna do something tomorrow?”
Jade stilled, then smiled before she could stop herself. The question was so normal it almost hurt after the texts and the secrets and everything else she had been carrying. “Like... what?”
“I don’t know. We could hang out. Walk somewhere. Grab something to drink. Sit in the courtyard and make fun of people. Whatever.”