Aaron's eyes drifted back to the TV. The warehouse fire was over. A smiling anchor was talking about a charity event for exy kids. Something about new uniforms.
Aaron blinked once. His throat burned. His vision blurred again. He wasn't sure if he was angry or just tired. He wanted to scream. He wanted to smash the remote into the screen and tear apart everything Blake ever touched and then cling to it like it could bring him back. He wanted to believe Blake was still out there. But every day that passed made it harder. Harder to breathe. Harder to hope.
He pulled his knees to his chest, buried his face in the hoodie, and let the tears come quietly. Again. It was killing him. Waiting. Not knowing. And the worst part was— he'd started to wonder if Blake was even still alive.
The door opened softly. A quiet click of the handle, followed by the subtle creak of the hinges—barely enough to notice if you weren't already on edge, if your heart wasn't already wired to jolt at the slightest sound. But Aaron noticed. He always noticed. His body tensed instinctively, just like it had for the past twenty-one days. He looked up from the TV, hope flaring inside his chest like a dying match trying to spark back to life.
But it wasn't Blake. It was Allison. She stepped inside with the gentleness of someone walking through a church or a graveyard. She didn't slam the door shut or call out a greeting—just pressed it closed with her fingertips and stood there for a second, as if she had to collect herself before moving.
She looked the same and not the same. Her long blonde hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, but strands had fallen loose around her face. Her makeup was smeared beneath her striking blue eyes, and her lips trembled even though she wasn't saying anything yet. She was wearing just jeans and a black coat—but she looked like grief incarnate. Like someone who had spent three weeks being slowly eaten alive by the silence Blake left behind. Aaron didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
Allison walked over to him with slow, careful steps and sat down beside him on the couch. The cushion dipped with her weight. She didn't ask permission. She didn't need to. Her eyes found the TV screen first, registering the shift from the warehouse fire to some feel-good sports segment about underfunded exy teams. It was irrelevant. It was noise. Aaron turned his head toward her. She turned to meet him at the same time. Her eyes were full of tears. So were his. And neither of them tried to hide it.
The silence between them was thick and familiar. A shared understanding. A fragile truce in a war no one else seemed to be fighting. The weight of Blake's absence hung between them like a thundercloud, and they sat there, breathing in the smoke of it.
Allison reached for the sleeve of Blake's hoodie—the one Aaron was wearing—and rubbed the frayed hem between her fingers. She wasn't crying yet. But her chin was shaking. Her mouth was tight like she was physically holding the sobs back, trying to keep some composure even as the storm threatened to swallow her whole.
"He's not coming home," Aaron whispered. His voice cracked like dry glass.
Allison blinked hard, the first tear falling before she could stop it. "They're not doing anything to look for him," she said, barely above a whisper. Her voice broke halfway through. "Aaron..." she turned fully toward him now, shoulders trembling as more tears spilled down her cheeks. "We have to do something."
It wasn't just desperation in her voice. It was terror and fury coiled into the same breath. She reached for his hand, not delicately—firmly, as if she was trying to ground herself in his grief because hers was too unbearable alone.
Aaron clutched her fingers like they were the only thing keeping him from collapsing.
"I know," he whispered, the tears rising again, burning behind his eyes. "I know."
Chapter 7. You're his love
Start from the beginning
