My phone was on the coffee table; screen cracked from when I’d thrown it against the wall sometime after midnight. Twenty-three missed calls from Hadley. Forty-seven texts. The last one, sent at 3:17 a.m.:
Please just tell me you’re alive. I’m scared.
I stared at it until my vision blurred, then flipped the phone face-down. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t answer. Every time I thought about typing back, rage surged up again, hot, blinding, familiar. She’d let Kei kiss her. In our kitchen. While I was out buying fucking roses like some pathetic idiot trying to fix what I’d broken.
I dragged myself to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, avoided the mirror. When I finally looked, the guy staring back was a wreck: eyes bloodshot, skin gray, stubble turning into abeard. I looked like my dad on the bad nights, the ones Mom pretended not to notice.
Back in the living room, I found the half-empty bottle of Jack on the floor beside the couch. I picked it up, took a long pull straight from the neck. The burn grounded me for a second, sharp enough to cut through the fog. Then the door buzzed.
I froze.
It buzzed again.
I opened it.
Sydney stood there in oversized sunglasses and a hoodie, holding two paper bags. She didn’t wait for an invitation, just slipped past me like she belonged.
“You look like shit,” she said, setting the bags on the counter. One smelled like coffee; the other like grease—burgers, probably.
I shut the door. “What are you doing here?”
“Kei told me you weren’t answering. Holland’s losing his mind about rehearsal tomorrow. Someone had to check you weren’t dead in a ditch.” She pulled out two coffees, handed me one. “Black. No sugar. The way you pretend you like it when you’re punishing yourself.”
I took it but didn’t drink. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” She studied me, head tilted. “You’re spiraling, Cal. And you’re doing it alone. That’s never worked for you.”
I laughed, short, bitter. “Alone’s better than surrounded by liars.”
She stepped closer, voice dropping. “She lied to you.”
My stomach twisted. “She said she pushed him away.”
“And you believe her?” Syd’s laugh was soft, almost pitying. “She kept him close for months. Late-night texts. Deep conversations. The way she looked at him like he was the only one who really saw her. You saw it too. You just didn’t want to admit it.”
I swallowed hard. The coffee burned my tongue. “She said....”
“She says a lot of things.” Syd reached out, brushed my hair back from my forehead like I was a kid again. “Fragile little Hadley. Always the victim. Always the one who needs protecting. But who protects you, Cal? Who protects the guy who’s been bleeding out since Mexico?”
I flinched at the name. Couldn’t help it.
She noticed. “Exactly. We survived that hell together. All of us. And now she waltzes in, plays house, and the second you start to feel something real; she lets your best friend put his mouth on hers. That’s not an accident. That’s a test. And you failed it by caring.”
I set the coffee down too hard. Liquid sloshed over the rim. “I hit him.”
“Good.” Her eyes flashed. “He deserved it. He crossed a line. And she let him.”
“She said she didn’t want it.”
Syd’s smile was small, sad. “She says that now. After you caught them. Convenient, right?”
I paced to the window, stared at nothing. My chest felt caved in. “I was trying. Therapy. Nursery. Flying her friend in. I was fucking trying.”
“I know.” Syd came up behind me, rested her chin on my shoulder. Her voice was velvet and venom. “And she rewarded you by letting Kei get that close. You opened up, first time in years, and she repaid you with betrayal. That’s what people do when you show weakness. They take.”
I closed my eyes. “I called her a whore.”
Silence stretched.
