Sophie stared at the shredded pieces of paper scattered across her floor, her chest heaving, her nails digging crescents into her palms. He's with me now.
The words burned through her skull, louder than her own heartbeat. She tried to tell herself it was another one of Ethan's games, another attempt to twist Marcus away from her. But deep down, in the pit of her stomach, she knew there was truth buried in the taunt.
Marcus hadn't come last night. He hadn't even tried.
Her phone lay silent on her nightstand, no messages, no calls. She grabbed it, fingers trembling, and dialed his number again. Straight to voicemail.
By morning, the silence was unbearable. Sophie walked into school like a ghost, her legs weak beneath her. The halls buzzed with whispers, but none of them mattered. Every face blurred except the one she searched for, and every time she didn't find him, her chest hollowed further.
Marcus's seat in homeroom was empty.
By lunch, it still was.
When Sophie finally caught sight of him, it wasn't relief that filled her—it was dread.
He stood at the far end of the hallway, leaning against a locker. His hood was up, his hands buried deep in his pockets. And beside him, half in shadow, was Ethan.
Her breath caught.
They weren't fighting. They weren't snarling or tearing into each other like before. They were just… standing there. Side by side.
Ethan noticed her first. He smiled, sharp and slow, then leaned in to whisper something in Marcus's ear. Marcus didn't flinch. He didn't turn away. He didn't even look up when Sophie called his name.
Her voice broke in the crowded hallway. "Marcus!"
Finally, his head lifted. Their eyes met across the distance, and Sophie's heart cracked open.
Because in that moment, she couldn't tell whose eyes she was looking into.
Marcus blinked once, then turned and walked away. Ethan followed. Neither of them looked back.
The world blurred. Sophie stumbled into the bathroom, gripping the sink until her knuckles turned white. Her reflection looked like a stranger—eyes red, hair wild, lips trembling with words she couldn't say.
She whispered them anyway, to the mirror. "He's mine. He's mine. He's mine."
But the mirror didn't believe her.
That night, Sophie waited by the window again, but hope no longer held her upright. She sat curled on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees, listening to every creak of the house.
When the window finally creaked open, she looked up so fast her neck ached.
It wasn't Marcus.
Ethan slipped inside, silent as a shadow. His face was healing, the bruises fading, but the grin was sharper than ever.
"You should stop waiting," he said softly. "It's pathetic."
Sophie's voice trembled. "Where is he?"
Ethan tilted his head, pretending to think. "With me. Where else would he be?"
Her nails dug into her palms. "You're lying. You can't have him."
"Oh, Sophie." Ethan crouched in front of her, his grin inches from her face. "I don't need to 'have' him. He's already halfway mine. I just let him believe he still has a choice."
Tears stung her eyes. "He'll never choose you."
Ethan chuckled. "He already has. He came to me last night. Didn't even fight it."
Her stomach dropped. She shook her head violently. "No. You forced him."
"Did I?" His eyes gleamed. "Or did he finally realize what he's been all along?"
Sophie shoved him back, her voice breaking into a scream. "Get out!"
Ethan didn't move. He just smiled wider. "He won't come back to you. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. The more you cling, the faster he slips away. And when he finally lets go…" He leaned close, whispering against her ear. "You'll know it by the sound of my voice on his lips."
Before she could strike him, he vanished back out the window, swallowed by the dark.
Sophie collapsed to the floor, sobs wracking her chest. Her notebook lay nearby, its cover torn, pages worn thin by desperate words. She grabbed it, flipping to a blank page, and wrote until her hand cramped, until ink smeared across her skin.
You are mine. You are mine. You are mine.
The words blurred as her tears fell.
But deep down, she wasn't sure if Marcus could still hear her anymore.
She screamed until her throat went raw, until the sound turned into a hoarse whisper and finally into silence. The room felt smaller, the air thicker; the shadows in the corners had teeth. Sophie pressed her palms flat to the floor as if anchoring herself to the place where Marcus had once been a certainty. She had never felt so small and so heavy at the same time.
She tried calling him. Again and again, she punched his number into her phone until her fingers stung; each call went straight to voicemail. She left messages she deleted before they sent, voice notes of pleading that sounded ridiculous even in her head. She typed texts and hit send and watched the dots of "delivered" flicker and die without so much as a read receipt. Every silence felt like a hand tightening around her ribs.
Morning was a pale thing that crawled into the room without mercy. Sophie slept until the sun climbed high, waking to a world that had continued to move without her. She dressed mechanically, wiping her face with cold water, breathing into the mirror until her reflection steadied. The bruise under her eye from the night in the yard throbbed faintly; she had told herself it would be a mark of survival. Now it looked like a map back to everything she feared.
School was a theater of small cruelties. People watched her not with pity but with a fascination that felt like a verdict. The rumor mill had decided he was gone because she had driven him away with her love or because she had pushed him into Ethan's hands; the narratives shifted to suit the hungry mouths of teenagers who liked to watch disasters. Teachers whispered and shook heads. Friends went quiet. Cameras and phones documented everything; one more clip of Marcus losing himself could go viral and ruin them both.
Sophie moved like a ghost. She kept expecting to see Marcus's hood bend at the corner of the hallway, to find him waiting at the usual bench, to have him appear like the answer to a prayer. But each time she reached out in the space where he should be, she only touched air. The absence was a bruise.
At lunch she sat alone in the courtyard, the sun hollow and useless on her skin. Her notebook was open on her lap, pages full of the same words, the same incantation: You are mine. You are mine. You are mine. She knew the repetition was an act of will, an attempt to remind herself of ownership—to keep Ethan's suggestion from becoming truth.
She didn't see him come. He materialized like a shadow does: there, and then not. Marcus slid onto the bench across from her without fanfare, hood down, face set in a mask she couldn't read. For a moment they simply looked at each other, two people with lost edges.
"You should have stayed," Sophie said before she could stop herself.
He laughed, a sound that was more a rasp. "Stayed doing what? Pretending? Sleeping? Ignoring the thing gnawing at my ribs?" His fingers found the seam of the notebook and traced it as if sensing the ink had power.
Sophie closed it on reflex. "You didn't come. You left me. For him."
Marcus's jaw tightened. "It's not that simple."
"Isn't it?" Her voice cracked. "You walked past me in the hall and didn't come over. You stood by him. You let him speak into you." The accusation was raw; it tasted of grief and betrayal.
He looked away, the skin of his neck bleaching pale. "I thought… I thought if I went to him, maybe I could understand it. Hear him. See what he sees." His hands trembled. "I didn't think I'd listen."
"You listened," Sophie said, the words incandescent with hurt. "He told you what he needed you to be. Why? Why would you even—"
Marcus's hand closed over hers so hard her teeth screamed. "Because sometimes, Sophie, the idea of being broken is less exhausting than fighting to stay whole." His eyes were wet with something that could have been shame, could have been surrender. "Because when he talks to me, the pain turns into something I recognize. And that recognition… it's a relief."
Sophie recoiled as if struck. Relief. The word hung like a dead thing between them. For a beat, she let herself imagine his nights alone, the whisper crawling from his chest to his knuckles, the small comforts found in becoming the monster others expected. She imagined Ethan feeding that comfort, watching it grow like a parasite that would eventually be too large to excise.
"You don't get to call this fought for," she said, voice low. "You don't get to let him in and then expect me to stitch you back together for free."
Marcus flinched, but his fingers did not let go. "I know." He swallowed. "I'm sorry." Not for what he had done for Ethan, but for what he had become to her: a shadow of himself.
There was another sound then, soft as the opening of a book—footsteps, careful, practiced. Sophie looked up: Ethan stood at the edge of the courtyard, half-hidden near the hedges, a figure dressed in casual menace. His presence had the incense of danger. It made the air taste metallic.
He stared at them and then, as if reading something only he believed, he smiled. The smile was small but it struck with the precision of a blade. "I wondered how long it would take," he called across the distance. "You two have been so touching, holding each other like a secret."
Marcus's muscles coiled. "Don't." It was not a plea.
Ethan shrugged as he stepped forward, his gait slow and confident. "She's doing all she can. But love is a lousy anchor, Marcus. I prefer the things that make sure you can't escape—habits, patterns, the taste of violence." He looked Sophie up and down like someone cataloguing spoils. "You're very brave, Sophie. I'll give you that."
"You're a coward," Sophie spat.
Ethan's laugh was low. "We'll see how brave you stay." He paused, considering. "Meet me tonight," he said to Marcus, like offering a simple appointment. "Same place. Alone."
Marcus turned to stare at Ethan, eyes flat as thrown flint. "No."
Ethan's smile slowed, becoming colder, colder than the March air. "Then I guess I'll have to come to you." He tipped an imaginary hat and walked away, leaving a wake of silence and unsettled birds.
That night Sophie barely slept. She waited, pencil in hand, pages of frantic prose scattered around her like talismans. She wanted to go to him, to drag him back to the edge where they had once stood together like two stubborn sentries against the dark. She wanted to force him to remember the nights when his laughter had been cruel but warm, when his smirk could be tamed into something softer. But the idea of confronting Ethan—with Marcus possibly at his side—flooded her with a cold terror.
Her phone buzzed at two in the morning. Her heart hammered—maybe an excuse, maybe a lie, maybe a reason to go. She snatched up the device like it was a lifeline: a number she didn't recognize, a message. He'll be with me. Don't come looking. From Ethan. No signature; he didn't need one. The text was concise, surgical. It was not a warning. It was a sentence closing.
Sophie's breath turned thin. The room seemed to tilt, as if the house itself had chosen a side.
She dressed without thinking, fingers numb, and walked the damp streets with a determination she half-believed would save him. The night smelled of rain and refuse, of the last remnants of the storm. Street lamps threw halos like moons; alleys waited like open mouths. She followed the path her gut carved—toward the old train tracks, toward the place where decisions were made and unmade.
He was there—sitting on the rusted rail, shoulders rounded, the world stacked around him in its usual neglect. But he wasn't alone. Ethan leaned against a concrete post several feet away, hands in pockets, the picture of patience.
For a stretch of time Sophie only watched, the scene unfolding slower than heartbeats. Marcus turned his head toward her when her foot scuffed a pebble, and the thing in his face made her chest squeeze—an expression halfway between gratitude and apology. He slid off the rail without a word and approached her, footsteps quiet. Ethan did not move.
"You shouldn't be here," Marcus said, breath exhaled as if it hurt.
"Neither should you," Sophie replied. "Come with me."
He looked at her, and for the first time she saw the fracture in his resolve widen like a river over dry ground. "I can't pretend anymore," he said. "Pretending makes me weak. I pretended I could be the man you wanted. But all I wanted—" He stopped, shakes in his jaw. "All I wanted was to be the disappearance."
Sophie's hands balled into fists. "You're not allowed to quit. Not now."
"It's not quitting," Marcus said. "It's surrender."
Ethan's laugh cut across the tracks, small and pleased. "So theatrical," he said softly. "If you want him, Sophie, let him go. Let go and watch what comes back: a man with answers, fewer questions, a steady hand."
Sophie wanted to hurl herself at Ethan, to peel that grin off him with her nails. Instead, she spoke to Marcus, because her words had to be the ones that mattered now. "You tell me you want to disappear? To turn yourself into the thing he says? Then I'd rather burn. If you are going to drown, Marcus, I will jump in with you—but I won't watch you be taken by someone who thinks it's a game."
The confession felt like a vow. Marcus's eyes shone wetly. He stepped closer and in the pool of lamplight, he reached for her—half for comfort, half for something harder. His hand found hers; the touch was both electric and mortal. He squeezed. "What if I'm already gone?" he whispered.
"You're not," she answered without hesitation.
Ethan's voice, low as a drawl, seeped across the cold air. "I think he's making a choice. In the end, all choices are made in the dark." He pushed himself up and strolled toward them. He stopped a few paces away, smiling in a way that made Sophie's skin crawl. "Make it easier on everyone, sweetheart. Don't be stubborn. Let him choose what's best for him."
Sophie didn't have long to make her choice. Marcus's face crumpled in a way that was too human for her to watch without flinching; he stepped back, hands in his pockets, and turned away from Ethan. For a beat of dizziness, Sophie thought he was going to leave—walk into the night and never return. Her knees went weak with the breath she'd been holding for months.
Then, instead, Marcus looked at her—really looked—and in that look was everything: the terror, the desire, the ache. "I can't promise I won't fall," he said. "I can promise I'll be near the edge. If I fall, come—" He stopped, the sentence fracturing.
Sophie moved, closing the space between them so fast it felt reckless. She cupped his face with both hands and kissed him like she meant to anchor him by force. His mouth softened under hers, answering with the raw need of a man who has been close to losing himself. For a blazing second, she felt them both: the man who loved her, the man whose hand had almost closed on Ethan's throat in her room, the man who trembled when he thought of himself.
When they broke apart, he turned to Ethan and spat the words none of them could unhear: "I am not yours."
Ethan's grin flickered, the smallness in it paling for a heartbeat. "We'll see," he said, and then he melted back into the darkness, leaving behind the cold where his presence had been.
They stayed on the tracks until dawn, shoulders pressed together, eyes red, the world stupidly beautiful in the way it refused to pause for their suffering. Marcus's fingers were callused and warm around Sophie's; she thought she might bore his shape into her skin if it would make him permanent.
But as the sky lightened, Marcus's phone buzzed with a single message. He read it, and the color completely drained from his face.
Sophie watched him, feeling the way the floor fell away. He didn't need to read it aloud. She saw the shape of the words in the way his jaw clenched, in the way his knuckles went white. The silence after the message pinged was more violent than any shout.
He folded the phone shut and swallowed. "He said… he's coming."
Sophie's hands tightened on his. "We face him."
"We don't stand a chance," Marcus said at first, then steadied himself with a breath. "But maybe… maybe we do. Not alone."
The plan, if it could be called that, was messy and dangerous, built of raw impulses and the little things on which desperate people cling. They would not meet Ethan where he wanted, alone. They would force the light into the places he preferred to hide. They would take witnesses—friends that still believed enough to help, a security camera, a teacher on a late shift. They would turn his theater into exposure.
It was imperfect. It was audacious. It was everything Sophie had left.
When night came again, they were ready—or as ready as two people carrying too much damage could be. Marcus stood with her in the old music shop alley, hood down, face pale but resolute. Sophie's hands didn't tremble; they were steady as iron at his side. They were no longer two fragile things alone but a pair whose halos had been broken into something that might cut.
At the mouth of the alley, a shadow loosened itself and stepped forward. Ethan—cleaner and colder than before—smiled like a man who had been waiting his whole life for this curtain to rise. He clapped once, slow and mocking. "Bravo," he said. "What a spectacular production. Curtain call?"
Marcus didn't flinch. "This ends tonight," he said. His voice carried like a promise.
Ethan's smile widened. "You think so?" He spread his hands, offering them to the night like an invitation. "Prove it."
The first blow began the silence breaking. The night split into sound and there was no going back.