Chapter 145
Summer's POV
Three weeks later, March air in Boston had a way of pretending spring was coming, only to slap you with sleet and wind that cut straight through your coat. I sat cross-legged on my bed, staring at my phone like it might suddenly sprout arms and strangle me.
Kieran: Today's training was exhausting. Get some rest early.
That was it. That was all I'd gotten from him in forty-eight hours. No "how was your day," no "did you eat lunch," nothing that felt remotely like the boy who'd given me a ring with a pink bow and promised he'd come back to me. Just these flat, mechanical responses that made my chest ache.
I scrolled up through our messages from the past month. Good morning. Did you have lunch? Good night. Like he was checking items off a to-do list. Like I was homework he had to get through before he could close his eyes.
It hadn't started this way. The first week after he'd gone back to homeschooling, he'd still called me every night, his voice tired but present, telling me about Lily's progress with her cochlear implant, about Catherine's new recipe attempts at the food cart. I'd told myself then that this was just temporary, that Drake's presence was making everything harder but we'd get through it together. I'd held onto his promise like a lifeline—I'll come back to you—and believed that distance was just geography, not emotion.
But then the calls got shorter. Then they became texts. I'd tried to stay positive, reminding myself that he was under pressure, that he was protecting Lily, that I just needed to be patient and understanding. I'd sent him pictures of things I thought would make him smile—a stray cat near the music building, cherry blossoms starting to bud in the Public Garden, my terrible attempt at making the chocolate chip cookies he liked. He'd responded with brief acknowledgments, sometimes just a thumbs-up emoji, and I'd told myself that was enough, that he was still there even if he couldn't say much.
Then the texts became these hollow, one-line responses that felt like he was typing them from somewhere far away, somewhere I couldn't reach. Week by week, I watched the boy I loved disappear behind walls I couldn't climb, and the worst part was that I could feel my own resolve crumbling with each passing day. The confidence I'd felt standing in that empty classroom, promising I'd wait for him—it had seemed so solid then, so certain. But that was before I understood what waiting actually meant, before I realized that loving someone who was drowning felt like drowning yourself in slow motion.
Last Thursday, I'd asked if we could meet up over the weekend, maybe grab coffee near the Public Garden like we used to. He'd said he was busy with training. When I pushed, asking what kind of training took up entire weekends, he'd gone silent for six hours before responding with Sorry, fell asleep early.
That was when I knew something had changed, when the last thread of my optimism finally snapped.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I wanted to ask if he was okay, if Drake had done something new, if the situation with his family had gotten worse. But every time I tried to type something real, something that might actually get through to him, I deleted it. Because what if he lied again? What if he said "everything's fine" in that careful, controlled voice he used when things were falling apart?
I knew he was protecting Lily. I knew Drake was dangerous. I'd promised I would wait, that I would understand whatever he needed to do to keep his family safe. But this silence wasn't protection—it was erasure. He wasn't just keeping me at arm's length; he was pretending I didn't exist except as an obligation he had to respond to twice a day.
I thought about the last time he'd gone silent like this—right after Drake got out of prison and Lily had that screaming fit in the street. He'd vanished for three days, and when he finally resurfaced, he'd looked like something had been scraped out of him. But back then, he'd at least come back to me. He'd let me in, even if it was just for a moment, even if it hurt him to do it.
Now he was doing the same thing, except this time he was doing it while still technically talking to me, which somehow made it worse.
My thumbs moved before I could stop them.
Me: Did you actually go to school for training today? Did Coach Anderson say anything?
I hit send and immediately regretted it. Too obvious. Too needy. But I needed to know if he was lying, if he was somewhere he shouldn't be, doing something dangerous without telling me.
Ten minutes crawled by. I watched the little "read" notification pop up under my message and felt my stomach twist. He was reading it. He was choosing not to answer right away.
Finally, my phone buzzed.
Kieran: Yeah, I went. Everything's normal.
Everything's normal. The words sat there on my screen, so neat and tidy they made me want to scream. That was the lie—not whether he'd shown up to training, but the claim that anything about this situation was normal. Because nothing about this was normal. Not the way he'd been avoiding me at school, not the way he only texted in these clipped, careful sentences, not the way I could feel him slipping away even though he'd promised he wouldn't.
Logan had told me just yesterday that Kieran had barely made it to Thursday's session—showed up five minutes before it ended, looking like he'd run the entire way from Southie, and then couldn't focus on a single problem. When Coach Anderson asked him a basic question about momentum conservation, he'd stared at the board for thirty seconds before mumbling something incoherent and excusing himself to the bathroom. Logan said he looked like he hadn't slept in days.
"Dude's gonna crash hard if he keeps this up," Logan had said, shaking his head. "Anderson's getting pissed. You know how he gets about focus."
That wasn't just tiredness. That was someone barely holding it together, someone who was drowning and couldn't even ask for help. And now he was sitting here texting me that everything was normal, like I couldn't see him falling apart from a mile away, like I was stupid enough to believe him.
He was shutting me out, the same way he'd done in my first life, except now I knew why and it didn't make it any easier. Keeping his pain locked up tight where I couldn't see it, where I couldn't help, where I couldn't do anything but watch him disappear piece by piece. I understood he was trying to protect Lily, trying to keep Drake's attention away from anyone he cared about. But understanding didn't stop the ache in my chest when I looked at his messages and saw a stranger.
I grabbed my hoodie off the chair and yanked it over my head. My hands were shaking as I stuffed my phone and wallet into my pockets. I didn't have a plan. I just knew I couldn't sit here anymore, staring at lies on a screen and pretending I believed them.
Downstairs, Mom was in the living room with her laptop, probably reviewing next quarter's projections or whatever CEOs did at seven-thirty on a Monday night. She looked up when I came down the stairs too fast.
"Going somewhere?"
"Mia's," I said without stopping. "She needs help with her English essay."
"Summer—"
"I'll be back before ten. Promise."