7
969 Words
Emma’s POV
I didn’t see him all day.
No note. No text. No trace of Jace Kingston.
But the bullet he left behind sat heavy in my pocket like it was waiting for a verdict. Maybe that’s what he wanted, to disappear before I could ask the questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Or maybe he didn’t want to see what I looked like when I wasn’t afraid anymore. When I was done being quiet.
Because I wasn’t scared now.
I was furious.
I spent the day in a haze — lectures I didn’t hear, food I didn’t taste, footsteps I didn’t recognize as mine. But by the time night fell and the shadows crept back into my room like they belonged there, I knew I couldn’t wait.
I needed to see him.
I needed the truth.
I needed to know what Paige meant.
He wasn’t in his usual spot behind the science building. Not in the music room where he sometimes played late when no one was watching. But I found him anyway.
Top floor of the old rec hall, lights off, door cracked just enough to hear the low thump of his boots on the floorboards.
He didn’t look up when I entered.
He just said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
I stepped forward. “You left a bullet on my bed.”
His jaw clenched.
“I thought that meant I could ask why.”
Jace turned. And for a second, the boy I knew vanished.
He looked wrecked.
Eyes rimmed red. Hands bruised. Blood crusted along his wrist like he’d punched something harder than bone.
Maybe he had.
“Emma,” he said, voice low, strained.
“You don’t get to say my name like that,” I angrily snapped. “Not after disappearing. Not after leaving that.”
“I didn’t mean for you to find it.”
“You left it in my room. Where else was I supposed to find it?”
His silence said enough.
I walked closer. “Who’s Paige?”
His head turned sharply, like the name hit him in a place I hadn’t meant to touch.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not backing off just because you can’t handle the truth.”
“Don’t say her name,” he said again, quieter now.
“Why? Is she dead?”
The glass in his hand cracked. His knuckles went white.
And then, very calmly, he said, “Get out.”
“No.”
“You don’t want this version of me, Emma.”
“Then give me another.”
His hand trembled. The glass slipped and shattered across the floor.
He didn’t react.
Just stared at the pieces like he couldn’t remember putting them together in the first place.
“I thought I was protecting you,” he said softly.
“By shutting me out?”
“By keeping your name off their list.”
My throat tightened. “Whose list?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“You keep saying that. But I do want to know, Jace. I want to know everything. You don’t get to pull me into this and then push me away when it gets messy.”
He turned then. Eyes burning. “Everything gets messy around me.”
I took a breath. “Then maybe I deserve the right to choose if I want to stay.”
The air between us crackled. Not with heat. With something worse.
Truth.
Jace stepped forward. His hands hovered like he didn’t know whether to touch me or destroy the space between us.
“You deserve someone safe,” he said.
And just like that, the distance shattered.
Because I said the one thing I hadn’t let myself say until now.
“I don’t want safe,” I whispered. “I want real.”
For a second, he looked like he might kiss me again.
But then he dropped his hands.
And walked away.
Again.
I ran after him.
But I didn’t find Jace.
I found Elias.
He was standing at the bottom of the stairs like some perfectly timed coincidence, clean shirt, clean hands, the soft boy from my childhood who used to bandage my scraped knees and ask if monsters were real just so I’d say no and make him feel brave.
“Emma?”
I blinked. “Elias?”
He smiled. Not a smirk. Not a mask. Just… warm.
“Didn’t think you’d remember me.”
“I didn’t think I’d see you.”
“I transferred in this week. Thought I saw you yesterday but—” He trailed off, studying my face. “You okay?”
I didn’t answer.
He touched my arm gently. “Still wearing the same perfume.”
I tried to laugh. It came out broken.
“Come on,” he said. “You look like you need air.”
And maybe I did.
Because when he walked me toward the quad, I let him.
Because maybe he was everything Jace wasn’t. Safe. Steady. Soft.
But when Elias offered to walk me back to my dorm, I said no.
Because the boy who’d broken me open wasn’t Elias.
It was Jace.
When I got back to my room, I locked the door. Turned on every light.
Everything looked untouched.
Until I saw the bed.
A shirt lay folded at the edge.
Jace’s shirt.
The one he wore the night he disappeared.
Blood stained the sleeve. Dried, but thick enough to turn the fabric stiff. No note. No message.
Just a name.
Written in black marker inside the collar.
Paige.
Not mine.
Not his.
Hers.
And I had no idea who she was.
But I was starting to understand something far worse.
Whoever Paige was… she burned Jace Kingston down long before I ever lit the match.
- Writer
