SLOANE
The silence that followed wasn’t a truce.
It was a ceasefire. A fragile, terrifying thing held together by the sound of our ragged breathing and the low, steady hum of the refrigerator.
He stumbled back another step, running a hand through his already-destroyed hair. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine—darting from the floor to the ceiling to the grease stain on the stove—anywhere but at the wreckage he’d just created against the wall.
“I’m—” he started, voice raw and broken. He cleared his throat. Tried again. “I’m gonna…”
He didn’t finish. Just turned and fled.
I heard his bare feet pounding up the stairs. Two at a time. The sound of his bedroom door closing—softly, not with a slam, which was somehow worse—echoed down like a gunshot.
I stood there, back pressed to the cool plaste
