Chapter 224

#91

I text Eli four times before noon and get nothing back. Not even the clipped, professional one word responses he’d normally manage even when he’s furious with me, the kind of restraint that used to make me want to throw something at his head purely for the audacity of staying composed while I fell apart.

Nothing.

I know exactly why, obviously. I’ve known since the second I saw his face through that glass partition, frozen for half a beat too long before he disappeared, and I’ve spent every hour since then sitting with a private kind of shame I haven’t handed to a single person, not Danielle, not my mother, not even Zeke, who was standing directly in the middle of the thing I’m currently ashamed of.

Zeke, for his part, has gone quieter than I’ve ever seen him. He still shows up for training, still drives me to school, still does