“Fuck!” I yelled.
I deleted the messages from her phone before she came out. While I was in settings, I set up a passcode for her.
She walked out of the bathroom, towel twisted in her hair, steam ghosting around her like a halo. She was smiling like we were about to go to dinner or out to a movie, like we lived in some normal world where people didn’t send death threats and stab girls in the dark.
Inside, I was exploding.
“Hey—whatcha doing?” Her voice was so sweet it was almost cruel. She had no idea what I was holding back.
I stared at her. I should’ve said something soft, something true, like you’re so beautiful, but the words burned in my throat. Instead, I swallowed them and said,
“I saw your phone wasn’t password-protected. I set it up for you. It’s our anniversary.”
“Thanks,” she said. She gave me the sweetest kiss, and I clung to her like a drowning man, like if I held her tight enough, nothing could pry her away from me. Not Jackson. Not this game. Not fate.
“I love you. You know that, right?” I looked right into her eyes. They were moss on clover tonight—green on green, deep and wild.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
“You can tell me anything.” It came out more like a demand, more like a ‘please fucking tell me before I lose my mind’, but she just shook her head and stepped back.
“I know, and I do… tell you everything,” she said, smiling coquettishly.
I sat back. She had just lied to my face, and she had done it so well that it felt practiced. That didn’t sit well with me. My chest tightened.
She wasn’t the only one capable of lying.
I hadn’t spokento Mackenzie for a few hours, ever since she ran off after our fight. I’d been texting her nonstop. She wasn’t in her usual spots. The cabin, the dining hall, and the lake were all empty. Everywhere that usually held some trace of her felt hollow.
I couldn’t find her, and it was making me panic.
Where are u?
Trouble, please text me back.
Mackenzie.
I’m not going to ask you again.
Text me back now. Please turn your location back on.
Please, please, please, stop ignoring me. I’m sry.
I love u. I love u so much.
Please. Please don’t do this to me.
The longer Mackenzie ignored me, the longer my thoughts simmered. There was a two-week break before we headed to GCU for baseball and soccer training. I still hadn’t told my parents that Mackenzie and I had gotten married. They expected me to come home, but not with a wife. Not with this kind of chaos stitched to my side.
The thought of her being alone without me made me want to gag. The world felt full of sharp edges and shadows, and she was walking through it without armor. I was a complete mess. I’d already lost my mind and kept imagining different scenarios ofwhat might have happened to her. Her body in the lake, blood on the dock, Jackson’s smile in the dark.
I checked my phone every five minutes for a text message from her and ended up draining my battery. I stopped by the cabin to grab my charger, and I also wanted to hack into her phone’s location settings from my computer. If she wouldn’t let me in, I’d force my way in another way.
As I blew through the cabin, I heard Megan say, “Did you see Jackson earlier?”
I stopped cold in my tracks.
“What?”
