My vision tunnels.
“I’m calling the police,” Seth says, already dialing. “Right now.”
“Do it,” I say. My voice sounds distant to my own ears. “Don’t hang up.”
Sirens aren’t there yet—but I can hear Sage outside the car, sobbing now, then laughing, then screaming again. Hands slapping glass. Nails scraping.
“You promised me!” she screams. “YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!”
Tony’s hand clamps down on my shoulder, hard enough to ground me.
“Stay with me,” he says quietly.
I force myself to breathe.
“She keeps asking if it’s you,” Seth says. “She’s saying?—”
The police dispatcher cuts in faintly on his end.
And Sage—still screaming—still convinced this destruction is devotion.
I stare out at the mountain, at the white swallowing everything whole, and understand something with sickening clarity:
This wasn’t about my house.
Or the breakup.
Or even me.
This was about being heard.
And she would burn the world down to make sure she was.
The line goes dead.
Not a clean click.
A jagged, swallowed sound—like the call was ripped out by the roots.
“Seth?” I say.
Nothing.
I stare at my phone like if I look hard enough, it’ll start screaming again.
It doesn’t.
Something caves in my chest.
I don’t sit down so much as collapse—knees buckling, body folding in on itself in front of the stone fireplace at the ski lodgebar. Heat roars at my back. The smell of whiskey and wet wool presses in from all sides.
And I break.
It comes out of me ugly. Loud. Uncontrolled. A sound I don’t recognize until I realize it’s mine—raw sobbing that wrenches through my ribs like something is being torn free. My hands fist in my jacket. My head drops forward.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t stop.
