Scarlett
The house doesn’t sound the same after he leaves.
That’s the first thing I notice.
The hum of the fridge is suddenly too loud. The ticking clock over the stove feels like it’s drilling into my skull. Even the sea outside—usually a soft, expensive promise—sounds wrong. Like it’s waiting.
I stay on the kitchen floor for a long time.
I don’t know how long. Minutes. An hour. Long enough for the oil in the pan to burn and smoke to curl up toward the ceiling in lazy, poisonous spirals. Long enough for my knees to go numb and my throat to ache from swallowing sounds I’m not letting out.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
I keep staring at the spot where the letters were. The bare patch of counter looks obscene, like a body without skin. Like something’s been ripped out and left exposed.
He read them.
That’s the thought that keeps circling back, relentless.
He didn’t just see them. He read them. Every word. Every line Kai wrote like a blade sliding under my ribs. Every sentence I told myself didn’t matter because I never answered.
Did you read them?
The words echo now, mocking me.
I press my palms into my eyes until I see stars. My chest feels hollowed out, like something vital has been scooped clean and left bleeding quietly.
The truth rises automatically, desperate to be believed, even though it doesn’t save me.
I loved him.
I drag myself up from the floor and move through the house like a ghost. The polished surfaces reflect me back in fragments—my face blotchy and red, my eyes too bright, my mouth trembling like it’s about to confess something unforgivable.
In the bathroom, the air still smells faintly of steam and soap.
And him.
It’s not real. I know that. I know scent memory is a trick, a lie the body tells when the mind starts slipping.
But my stomach twists anyway.
I grip the edge of the sink and stare at my reflection.
You did this.
The thought doesn’t sound like Noah.
It sounds like Kai.
I flinch hard enough to knock my elbow against the counter. Pain shoots up my arm, sharp and grounding, and I cling to it like a lifeline.
He warned you.
I shake my head, whispering out loud now.
“Stop.”
The mirror doesn’t listen.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
I freeze.
Not because I don’t know who it is.
Because I do.
The screen lights up, bright and unforgiving.
No name.
No number saved.
Just a single message preview.
Did he read them?
My lungs seize.
I don’t pick it up.
I can’t.
The phone buzzes again, slower this time. Patient.
I told you he would.
Tears spill over before I can stop them. I slide down the cabinet again, my back hitting the wood, my knees pulled tight to my chest like I’m trying to fold myself small enough to disappear.
This is how it starts.
This is how it always starts.
Noah tightening the walls.
Kai slipping through the cracks.
I press my forehead to my knees, breathing in shallow, broken pulls.
“I didn’t answer you,” I whisper, even though he can’t hear me. “I never answered.”
The phone buzzes a third time.
You didn’t have to.
That’s when the panic really hits.
Because he’s right.
He never needed my reply.
The letters weren’t a conversation. They were a countdown.
I think about the way Noah looked at me—like something that needed to be secured, managed, hidden.
I think about the way Kai writes—like he already knows how this ends.
My hands curl into fists.
“I don’t belong to either of you,” I say, louder now, my voice cracking against the tile.
The silence that follows is heavy. Judgmental.
My phone vibrates once more.
Pack light, Scarlett.
My heart stutters.
The island isn’t where this ends.
I drop the phone like it burned me.
It skids across the tile and comes to rest against the wall, screen still glowing, patient as a loaded gun.
I wrap my arms around myself, rocking slightly, the house too big, the future too close, my name caught between two men who both think they’re entitled to decide what happens next.
And somewhere deep, ugly, and traitorous—a part of me knows this was inevitable because cages don’t just appear.
They’re built slowly and I’ve been standing inside one for a long time already.
The phone keeps glowing on the floor.
I don’t touch it.
I can’t.
It feels like if I pick it up, something will lock—like a door slamming shut somewhere I won’t be able to reach again.
So I sit there instead, arms wrapped around myself, rocking just enough to keep my body from shattering apart completely.
My pulse won’t slow.
It’s too loud. Too fast. Like it’s trying to run without me.
The house exhales around me—expensive wood, stone, glass, all of it holding its breath the way Noah does right before he decides something for me. The smell of burnt oil still hangs in the air, acrid and sharp, curling into my lungs until my throat tightens.
I forgot the stove.
Of course I did.
I drag myself up, legs trembling, and run to the kitchen and turn it off with clumsy fingers. The pan is blackened beyond saving. Ruined. I stare at it longer than I should.
Another thing I destroyed by standing too close.
I lean forward, palms flat on the counter, and suddenly my vision tunnels. The edges of the kitchen blur, the centre pulsing like it’s about to cave in on itself.
Breathe.
I try.
My breath comes out wrong—too shallow, too sharp. I feel that awful, floating sensation start to creep in, the one where my body feels miles away from my head, like I’m watching myself from behind glass.
No.
Not now.
I dig my nails into my palm until pain sparks bright and real. It grounds me just enough to stay upright.
He read them.
My stomach flips again, vicious and nauseating.
Noah didn’t just see Kai’s handwriting. He saw me between the lines. He saw the parts I never said out loud, the pieces I pretended were dead. He saw the history I tried to cauterise and call healed.
Your step brother, Scarlett.
Really? That’s fucking disgusting.
The words replay in my head, venomous and loud.
I slide open the drawer by the sink and fumble for a cloth, pressing it over my mouth like I can physically stop the memories from spilling out. My reflection in the microwave door looks feral—eyes too big, face blotched, hair falling out of its careful order.
I look like a liar.
I am a liar.
Not because I fucked him.
But because I never stopped being his.
That truth sits in my chest like a live wire.
My phone buzzes again.
Once.
I flinch so hard I drop the cloth.
I don’t look.
I already know what it will say.
He doesn’t need to text anymore. He’s done his damage. Noah’s reaction was the point. The explosion. The fracture.
Kai always liked pressure more than force.
I sink down against the cabinets again, sliding until I’m back on the floor, my spine curled inward like I’m trying to protect something vital.
“You don’t love me.”
Noah’s voice echoes, not shouting this time—quiet, wounded, furious in that way that feels worse because it sounds reasonable.
I press my forehead to the cold tile.
“I don’t know how to love safely,” I whisper to no one.
The house doesn’t answer.
But my phone does.
This time I look.
One message.
No punctuation.
He touched you when he said it, didn’t he.
My breath stutters.
I don’t type.
I don’t deny it.
I just stare until the words blur.
Another message follows, slow, deliberate.
That’s what I hate the most.
My fingers curl around the phone before I can stop myself. My hands are slick with sweat, the screen smudging under my grip.
“What do you want from me,” I whisper aloud, my voice hoarse and cracking.
As if summoned by the sound, the reply appears.
I want you to stop pretending this can end without blood.
A sob tears out of me, raw and unfiltered. I press the phone to my chest like it might crawl inside and finish the job.
“I’m so tired,” I breathe. “I’m so fucking tired.”
The typing bubble appears.
Disappears.
Appears again.
I know.
That’s what finally breaks me.
Not the threat.
Not the control.
Not even the inevitability humming under his words.
The knowing.
I fold forward, forehead hitting my knees, shoulders shaking as I cry so hard it feels like my ribs might cave inward. This isn’t pretty. It isn’t dramatic. It’s the sound of something giving up ground inch by inch.
I don’t answer him.
I don’t block him.
I just let the phone slip from my hand and hit the floor again, screen-up, still alive, still waiting.
Somewhere down the hall, a door slams.
Noah is still in the house.
That realisation crawls over my skin like ants.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and force myself to stand again, every movement heavy, deliberate, like I’m walking through wet cement.
Whatever happens next, it won’t be quiet.
And for the first time, standing alone in this too-bright kitchen with smoke still clinging to the air, I understand something cold and terrifying:
This isn’t about choosing.
It never was.
It’s about who gets to decide what’s taken from me first.