Chapter 4
739 Words
The memory came to Aria at 2 a.m.
Not all of it. Just a piece.
Music. A crowded room. String lights. A dance floor that wasn't really a dance floor, just a cleared space at someone's party, and her moving through it the way she always did when a song got into her bones.
And a boy watching from the edge of the room.
She sat up in the dark, heart pounding.
She couldn't see his face in the memory. It was too blurry, too far back, lost under months of everything that had happened since. But the feeling was the same one she'd had standing in that doorway.
She told herself it meant nothing. Parties blurred together. Boys watched her dance all the time. It didn't have to be him.
But she didn't sleep again that night.
The next morning Cayden was already in the kitchen when she came down.
He was leaning against the counter with coffee, scrolling his phone, and he looked up when she walked in with that same searching expression he'd been giving her since day one.
"You look like you didn't sleep," he said.
"I slept fine."
"You're a bad liar."
She got a glass from the cabinet, filled it from the tap, drank half of it. Buying time.
"Cayden."
"Yeah."
She turned to face him.
"That party," she said. "Eight months ago. Spring. Somewhere with string lights and bad music and too many people."
He went very still.
Just for a second. But she caught it.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
"You do." She set the glass down. "I can see it on your face right now."
He looked at her for a long moment, coffee forgotten in his hand.
And she waited, certain he was finally going to say it — whatever it was, whatever had been sitting between them since the doorway.
Then his mother walked in.
"Morning, you two." Victoria breezed through, grabbing her keys off the counter. "Cayden, can you drop Aria at school? My meeting got moved up."
The moment shattered.
"Yeah," Cayden said, not looking away from Aria. "I can do that."
"Perfect." Victoria was already half out the door. "Be good. Both of you."
Then she was gone, and it was just the two of them and the unfinished thing hanging in the air.
"So," Aria said. "The party."
"We should go." Cayden set his coffee down and grabbed his keys. "We'll be late."
"Cayden."
"Drop it, Aria."
His voice had an edge to it she hadn't heard before. Not cruel. Something closer to afraid.
That was what stopped her.
Because Cayden Hollis didn't do afraid. He did bored and smug and unbothered. He did the easy smile and the lazy walk. He did not do the thing his face was doing right now.
She let it go.
For now.
The car ride was silent.
She watched the city go by, turning the memory over. The party. The lights. The boy at the edge of the room. She pushed at it, trying to make his face come clear.
It wouldn't.
"You really don't remember," Cayden said suddenly.
She turned.
He was watching the road, jaw tight, both hands on the wheel.
"Remember what?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"Nothing," he said finally. "Forget it."
"You keep saying that. Forget it. Like there's something to forget."
"There isn't."
"You're lying."
He didn't answer.
They pulled up to the school. He parked but didn't unlock the doors.
For a second neither of them moved.
"If I tell you," he said quietly, still looking forward, "you're going to think I'm insane. Or that I made it up. Or that I'm — I don't know. Something."
Her heart was pounding.
"Tell me anyway," she said.
He turned to look at her then.
And whatever was in his face — that raw, unguarded thing he'd been hiding behind the easy smile since the day she arrived — made her breath catch.
"Not here," he said. "Not like this."
He unlocked the doors.
"We're going to be late."
She sat there for a second longer, every part of her wanting to push.
Then she grabbed her bag and got out.
But as she walked toward the school, she could feel him still watching her through the windshield.
And she knew, with a certainty she couldn't explain, that whatever he was hiding was about to change everything.
- Writer
