Chapter 55 Exactly Who He Is

Chapter 55 Exactly Who He Is
POV: Eli

I hit her door so hard my knuckles split.
"Zara. Open up. Please."
Nothing. No footsteps, no voice, no sound at all from the other side, which scared me more than yelling would have.
I'd driven straight from Jade's, my sister's screams still ringing in my ears from the call that cut off mid-sentence, and the only thing I could think to do with my body, with the panic clawing through my chest, was come here. To her. Like she was the only solid thing left standing.
"I know you're in there," I said, my forehead against the wood. "I'm not leaving."
Still nothing.
I texted her instead, my thumbs clumsy and fast. I'm outside. I'm not going anywhere. Take your time.
The little gray bubble showed up under my message. Then it disappeared. Then it showed up again. She was typing something and deleting it, over and over, like she couldn't find the right shape for whatever she wanted to say.
So I sat down. Right there in the hallway, my back against her door, my knees pulled up, my phone clenched so tight in my hand my fingers ached.
I thought about Naomi's face the day I came home, how she'd launched herself at me in the driveway like nothing had changed between us. I thought about the photo I still hadn't been able to make myself look at twice, the one of her tied to a chair, tape over her mouth, her eyes screaming what her voice couldn't.
I thought about my dad's voice on the phone an hour ago, cold and clipped. Go back to school in September, or the fund is gone, as if any of that mattered right now. As if money was the emergency.
And I thought about Zara, sitting somewhere on the other side of this door, carrying a weight that was never supposed to be hers in the first place. A video she didn't ask for. A best friend who walked away from her. A summer that was supposed to be soft and easy turned into something with teeth.
I'd done that, not on purpose. But I'd done it.
Ten minutes passed. Maybe more. My legs went numb under me, and I didn't move.
Finally, I heard it. The lock turning. Slow, careful, like she wasn't sure she wanted to finish the motion.
The door opened a few inches.
Zara stood there in the gap, eyes red and swollen, a sweet tea stain blooming across the front of her shirt like she'd been wearing it for hours and hadn't noticed or hadn't cared. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me, like she was waiting to see what I'd do with the opening she'd given me.
I didn't reach for her. I didn't fill the silence with something clever. I'd had the whole drive over to think about what to say, a hundred different versions of an apology, and every single one of them sounded like an excuse the second I tried it out in my head.
So I gave her the only true thing I had.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Not for what almost happened on that porch. I'm not sorry for that. I'll never be sorry for that."
Her jaw tightened, like she was bracing for the rest.
"I'm sorry for how much it cost you," I said. "Naomi. Your name in everyone's mouth. The way people look at you now like you did something wrong, when all you did was let yourself want something. That's on me. I should've protected that better. I should've protected you better."
She didn't move. She didn't speak. Something in her face cracked open just slightly, like she didn't know what to do with a boy standing in her hallway being exactly, painfully honest, with no speech, no performance, nothing dressed up to look prettier than it was.
"You don't get to just say that," she finally whispered. "You don't get to show up and be sorry and make it sound so simple."
"It's not simple," I said. "None of this is simple. I know that."
Her eyes filled again, fast, like she'd been holding a flood behind a wall made of paper. "Naomi's missing, Eli. Really missing. And I'm standing here in my hallway with you instead of out there looking for her, and I don't even know what that says about me."
"It says you're human," I said quietly. "It says you're scared. Both of those are allowed."
She let out a breath that shook on the way out, and for one second, just one, she leaned forward as she might actually let her forehead drop against my chest the way she had on the roof that first night.
Then her phone buzzed in her hand.
She flinched so hard she nearly dropped it.
"That's the number," she said, voice gone thin and tight. "The one from before."
I stepped closer; she turned the screen so I could see it.
Another text. Three words, same as the others, cold and simple enough to feel like a blade going in slow.
You didn't listen.
Under it, a new photo was loading, the little progress bar crawling across the screen like it had all the time in the world while my heart slammed against my ribs.
The image filled in piece by piece. A different room this time. A different angle.
And it wasn't Naomi in the chair anymore.
It was Jade.
Same tape over her mouth. Same wide, terrified eyes staring into the camera, makeup streaked down her face like she'd been crying for a long time before whoever was holding the phone decided to send this.
Zara's hand started shaking so hard the phone nearly slipped out of it.
Because if Jade was tied up in that house too, then she hadn't been lying on her porch when she swore she had nothing to do with the video.
Which meant someone had been using her name as cover this whole time.
And whoever was behind all of this didn't just know where Naomi was.
They'd been close enough to all of us, the whole summer, to grab a second girl without anyone noticing she was gone.