Scarlett
My phone won’t stop buzzing. It feels like the whole mattress hums with it, a sick vibration crawling up my spine. I don’t want to look—I already know who it is.
Tyler.
The glow burns against the dark room. Three missed calls. Six new messages.
You think you can ignore me?
You think I don’t know where you are?
My stomach twists. I press the phone face-down, like that can kill the words, but it only makes the silence heavier. Then it buzzes again.
You belong to me. Stop hiding.
The walls feel closer. My hands are shaking, and my throat is too tight to breathe properly. He used to be safe. He used to be my friend. And now—now he’s this voice bleeding out of the screen, demanding, claiming, choking me.
I curl tighter into the sheets, praying Kai doesn’t wake, because if he sees this—if he knows—I don’t know what he’ll do.
Another message lights the screen.
Open the door.
I freeze. The words don’t feel like texts. They feel like footsteps already on the porch.
Another buzz.
Open the door.
A knock follows it. Not polite. Not patient. A sharp, rattling pound that makes the glass in the picture frames tremble.
I jolt upright, my breath scraping the back of my throat. No. He’s not here. He can’t be here.
The pounding comes again—harder this time. My phone vibrates in the same rhythm.
I know you’re awake.
I scramble off the bed, my legs shaking, every shadow in the hallway stretching too long as I creep towards the stairs. Through the frosted pane of the front door, I see him—a dark shape on the porch, shoulders hunched, phone still glowing in his hand as if he’s already inside my veins.
“Scarlett,” he calls, low, taunting, like he owns the night. “Don’t make me keep knocking.”
I flinch back into the shadows. My phone buzzes again.
If you don’t open this door, I’ll make sure you fucking regret making me wait
The air rips out of me. My whole body rattles like the door under his fists.
Upstairs, the floor creaks.
Kai.
The pounding jolts again, and I nearly scream—only it isn’t the door that shakes this time. It’s the floorboards above. Heavy steps. Furious steps.
“Kai,” I whisper, but too late.
He’s already thundering down the stairs, half-dressed, jaw locked, eyes feral—the kind of storm you can feel in your teeth before it splits the sky.
He doesn’t ask what’s happening. He doesn’t look at me. He rips the deadbolt back, yanks the door wide—and there’s Tyler, smirking like he’s just won.
“Wrong fucking house,” Kai growls, voice low and lethal.
Tyler shifts, swagger barely intact, phone still lit in his hand. “She invited me.”
Kai lunges.
The doorknob rattles as Kai shoves him back onto the porch, fist already cocked, teeth bared. His body’s a wall of heat and fury in front of me, and all I can think is this is it—this is the night everything burns.
Kai slams him against the porch rail, knuckles whitening as he fists the front of Tyler’s hoodie.
“You knock on my door again,” he snarls, each word clipped and venomous, “and I’ll break every bone in your body before you hit the steps.”
Tyler tries to laugh it off, but the sound’s thin. “What the hell, man? She wanted—”
Kai’s hand slams the wood beside his head, loud enough to make me flinch. “Don’t say her name. Don’t even think it.” His voice drops so low and dangerous it’s barely human. “You don’t look at her. You don’t breathe her air. You disappear.”
Tyler swallows, shoulders hitching, bravado cracking.
Kai leans in, face a shadow inches from his. “Because if you don’t, you won’t be walking away next time.”
Then he lets go—abrupt, violent. Tyler stumbles down the steps, muttering curses that die the second Kai steps forward like he’s ready to finish it.
The silence after is deafening, broken only by my pulse hammering in my ears.
Kai turns, chest heaving, eyes still black with fury when they land on me. “Lock the door,” he bites out—command, not request. Then he’s gone, storming back upstairs without another word, leaving me shaking in the doorway.
The door slams, rattling in its frame, and I sag against it, sliding down until the wood digs into my spine. My hands won’t stop shaking.
Lock it, he said. Like I’m a child. Like I didn’t just watch him nearly snap Tyler’s neck on the porch.
I turn the bolt anyway, because I always do what he tells me—even when I hate myself for it.
The house feels wrong now. Heavy with his rage, thick with all the words I’m choking on. I press my palms over my face, but it doesn’t stop the tremors. Doesn’t stop the echo of his voice—Don’t say her name—as if I’m something he’s already claimed, branded, buried under his skin.
And I can still hear Tyler’s voice too, the pathetic little laugh before Kai cut it off. He doesn’t know about the messages. About the things Tyler has already said, already promised he’ll do.
I should have told him. God, I should have told him. But if I do, Kai will kill him. Not to scare him. Not to warn him. Kill him.
And then what? Prison bars. Headlines. My blood on his hands, whether or not he means it.
My chest cracks. A sob rips free before I can swallow it down. I bite hard into my palm to shut myself up, mascara streaking down my cheeks, breath shuddering like I’ve run a marathon.
I stumble up the stairs on unsteady legs, past the closed door of his room. The air up here is worse—charged, like he’s still in the hall with me. I want to knock, want to beg him to stay, want to scream at him to leave me alone.
Instead, I bury myself in my room, twisting the lock. Curling on the bed. The phone glows on the nightstand like a threat I can’t escape.
Another message blinks in.
You think he can protect you forever? He won’t be there next time.
I choke, clutch the blanket tighter. My whole body shakes as the words burn into me, scar-deep.
And all I can think is: Kai can never know. Because if he does, Tyler’s already dead.