The next morning, the sky over Cold Creek was the same dull winter grey it had been all week. The roads were wet in patches where light snow had fallen overnight and melted.
Everything looked the same.
Nothing was.
I had known it from the moment I went to sleep last night and opened my eyes this morning. The memory of those messages still pressed behind my eyelids and sat heavy in my chest.
Kelse… I don't think it's just inversion anymore.
Ethan hadn't finished what he wanted to say. He had pulled back at the last second. But it didn't erase the mark of his footstep over the line.
The memory made something twist inside my chest, and I bit it back hard.
***
I drove into the lot on autopilot, parked, killed the engine, and sat for one second too long with my hands on the steering wheel.
Through the windshield, I saw them waiting in their usual place, though "usual" felt like a heavy understatement.
Nell stood with her arms folded, dark ponytail pulled tight, her face composed in that sharp, steady way of hers that made her seem so much older than her age. Today, though, her shoulders seemed tense with a kind of strain that lived beneath the stillness.
Ethan stood a little to her left, Lara on his other side. The geometry of it felt wrong. Incomplete.
The moment I stepped out of the car, his attention landed on me so fast it almost felt like a blow. My heart stuttered.
Nothing in his face changed.
That was almost worse.
Last night still sat between us, unspoken and alive, and for one treacherous second I felt the ghost of a smile pull at my mouth. I killed it before it could fully form.
Get it together , I told myself. For five minutes, at least.
As I walked toward them, I felt his gaze sharpen. It moved over me in one quick sweep, as if he were confirming I was whole, upright, breathing, and holding onto that like a lifeline.
I hated that a part of me liked it.
"Morning," I said when I reached them, my tone deliberately plain.
"Morning," Nell answered first.
Ethan's mouth moved a fraction too late. "Morning."
Lara tilted her head and smiled a polished little smile. "You're on time today."
"Shocking, I know," I said.
Her smile remained exactly where it was, unnaturally fixed.
We started toward the entrance. The formation held without anyone discussing it. But beneath the surface, something had cracked, and everyone could feel it.
A boy by the flagpole stopped mid-sentence as we passed, nostrils doing that lupine flaring thing before his attention slid past me to Ethan and stayed there a beat too long. Near the front steps, two others lowered their voices. One of them watched Ethan with a look that made my skin crawl.
Inside, the hallways hit us with the usual morning crush, lockers slamming, damp jackets steaming, voices ricocheting off walls.
It didn't ease the feeling that something had shifted.
I was wrestling with the zipper on my bag when I glanced up and found Ethan already watching me, face unreadable, pupils a touch too wide. He looked away so quickly it should have annoyed me. It didn't.
A little later, by the trophy case, Lara said something to him. He turned toward her, answered, and then his eyes cut straight back to me, fast and reflexive.
Nell saw that one. I knew because nothing in her face changed. Only a muscle in her jaw ticked.
By second period, the tension had settled into something solid enough to touch.
Near the English wing, we passed Matt going in the opposite direction. His gaze flicked to me automatically, then caught on Ethan and held. Ethan turned just enough to meet it. Matt looked away first, harder than he needed to.
Later, outside the cafeteria, Ryan stood with Tess looped through his arm, only half listening to whatever she was saying. His eyes moved between me and Ethan as if he were staring at a puzzle he hated already knowing the answer to.
The school day passed like that, period after period, hallway after hallway. Like a hamster on a spinning wheel.
Last period was math. Mr. Varga droned on at the front about functions or derivatives or whatever particular brand of suffering he'd been assigned to inflict on us, while my notebook filled with lines that began as numbers and ended as nonsense.
I tried my best not to look at Ethan.
Still, every now and then my gaze slid to the back of his neck. To the stillness in his shoulders. To the way he held himself too carefully, as if, if he relaxed for even one second, something too honest might slip out where others could see it.
When the bell rang, the room exploded into the usual ear-scraping noise.
This was our minute alone.
I took my time packing up on purpose. One by one, the others filtered out until it was just us.
The room felt instantly too quiet. The radiator clicked once. Somewhere down the hall, a locker slammed.
I stood behind my desk with my bag hanging from one shoulder, fingers wrapped too tightly around the strap.
Ethan was still seated for one long second. Then he rose.
He didn't come closer. He just turned and looked me in the eyes, holding my gaze steady for the first time that day.
The air between us changed.
I had thought maybe when this moment came something in me would ease, because finally the pretending would stop. Instead everything inside me rose and had me by the throat.
There were things in his face I had not let myself look at too directly before. Fatigue. Want. Restraint wound so tight it was almost cruelty.
I heard my own voice before I had fully decided to use it.
"What you said… about inversion," I began, and my throat tightened around the word. "I know you said it doesn't matter."
He closed his eyes immediately, like it hurt him. As if I had put my hand straight onto something bruised.
"It matters to me," I said softly.
His eyes opened. For one suspended second, I thought he might actually say it.
The thing underneath all of this. The thing both of us had been circling like two people walking the edge of a sinkhole and pretending not to feel the earth crumbling beneath our feet.
"Kelsey," he said.
Something in my chest dropped in disappointment.
Kelsey. Not Kelse.
Then, more quietly, with something almost like desperation under the restraint, "Don't."
I didn't move. Neither did he.
But I understood what he'd left unspoken.
Don't ask me to say it out loud.
Don't make me open a door neither of us will be able to close.
He dragged a hand once over his face, sharp and abrupt, then stepped past my desk before I could think of anything to say. The force of his departure left a void behind.
A second later, he was out in the hall.
I stood there alone in the dead classroom, my pulse hammering in my throat, staring at the doorway he had disappeared through.
The radiator clanked again.
I closed my eyes and let out a breath, as if I could expel the ache along with the air.
Then I grabbed my bag and went after him.
***
By the time I reached the lot, everyone had already spread out into the familiar clusters of end-of-day escape.
But something was off. I saw it in Nell.
She was scanning the lot with the subtle alertness of someone trying very hard not to look distressed. Her eyes moved over the parked cars, the boys gathered near the low wall, the far edge by the road, then back again.
When she noticed me, she came half a step closer.
"Remember to text me when you get home," she said.
I paused. "I always do."
"Do it anyway."
Our eyes met, and a shiver passed through me.
"What's wrong?" I asked under my breath.
"Nothing," she said too quickly, then corrected herself with a tighter tone. "Probably nothing. Just… don't forget."
Behind her, Ethan was talking to Lara and trying very hard not to look at me. I knew that because, for a fraction of a second, his eyes turned toward me, then immediately corrected.
Taking a long breath, I glanced around the lot again. And then it hit me.
Ryan was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Matt.
The unease that hooked deep inside me intensified tenfold. I gritted my teeth. It was probably nothing.
I looked back at Nell. She had followed my glance. Her mouth had gone flatter.
"Kelsey," she called.
"Yeah?"
"Drive carefully."
The cold in my stomach dropped by one degree.
"I will," I said slowly.
She stepped back. That was all.
I got in the car, shut the door, and for a second just sat there with my hand on the key. Through the windshield, I saw Ethan finally meet my gaze.
The expression on his face was unreadable from here. It didn't matter. The force of it, the pull, landed anyway.
Forcing the feeling down, I pulled out of the lot.
***
The familiar road seemed darker, the combination of dying light and thickening evergreens making it suddenly feel like a dark, hungry maw.
I swallowed and turned on the headlights. The school shrank in the rearview mirror until it disappeared behind the thick trees.
My hands stayed tight on the wheel, my stomach tied into knots.
I told myself it was because of the day. Because of the classroom. Because of the way Ethan had closed his eyes and said don't when I brought it up. Because of everything he had packed inside it.
I drove.
At the first curve, I caught myself thinking about Matt and Ryan again. Not even consciously. Just a flicker.
Strange that they had not been in the lot. Was that why Nell had seemed so disturbed? God, the whole day had felt like a breath held for too long.
The trees spread their long, spindly fingers overhead, joining into a familiar canopy as the light dimmed another shade. My tires hummed over the road.
Then something changed.
At first, I thought it was the surface. A tiny judder. Stones, I thought. Or something similar. A branch, perhaps.
I frowned and loosened, then retightened my grip on the steering wheel.
Then came the sound, a loud, sharp crack. Then another.
The car lurched hard to the right.
A gasp left me as the wheel jerked in my hands with violent force. Instinct made me wrench it back. The back end fishtailed.
My heart slammed into my throat. No, no, no, no, no—
The road vanished sideways.
Headlights caught a blur of ditch and brush and white sky.
I hit the brake. The car screamed.
Something slammed underneath with a sickening crunch. The steering wheel ripped out of my hands. My shoulder hit the door. My head snapped sideways and pain burst white behind my eyes.
The last thing I saw before the car left the road completely was a scatter of small, sharp shapes on the asphalt behind me, glinting for one impossible second in the headlights.
Like fangs.
Then the ditch rose up and the world spun violently off its axis.