The text from Ezra was a grenade in his pocket.
Ezra: Saw your rose's little friend leaving. Packed a box. Looked like she was fleeing a crime scene. Good job, brother. The soil's all yours.
Leo read it in the empty parking lot, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. He hadn't told Ezra to go to Mila's house. He'd specifically told him to stay away. But Ezra never listened. He was a force of nature, a wildfire Leo pretended to control but could only ever watch burn.
And it had worked. Mila was gone. Avery was alone.
The victory felt like ash. It was Ezra's victory, carved with threats and broken glass. It wasn't the careful, gentle isolation Leo had imagined. It was a brutal amputation.
He was losing control. Of Ezra. Of the narrative. Maybe of himself.
He drove to Avery's apartment building not with a plan, but with a gnawing, feverish need to see. To confirm the isolation, to bask in it, to make it feel like his own.
He saw the light on in Avery's window. A single, fragile beacon in the dark. He parked and just stared, imagining him in there. Sitting on the floor again? Crying? Was he thinking of Mila? Was he thinking of… him?
The compulsion was sudden and violent. He didn't want to send an embossed card. He didn't want to engineer a meeting tomorrow. He needed to be near him now. The lattice of patience he'd spent years weaving was fraying, threads snapping under the weight of his brother's chaos and his own hungry heart.
He got out of the car. He didn't think. He crossed the street, entered the building (the front door lock was a joke), and took the stairs two at a time. His heart hammered, not with stealth, but with a frantic, pounding need.
He stood outside Avery's door. He could hear the faint sound of music through the wood. Something sad and acoustic.
He raised his hand to knock. Stopped.
What would he say? 'I saw your only friend abandon you. Let me in.'
He couldn't. It was too soon. It was all wrong.
But his hand didn't fall. Instead, his fingers brushed against the woodgrain of the door. Then his palm flattened against it. He leaned his forehead against the cool surface, closing his eyes. He was here. He was on the other side of this thin barrier from everything he wanted. He could feel the vibration of the music. He could almost feel the heat of Avery's presence.
It was a sacred, terrible intimacy.
He didn't know how long he stood there, a silent supplicant at the door. A minute? Five?
Inside, the music stopped.
Leo froze, breath catching. A floorboard creaked. Footsteps approached the door.
Panic, sharp and clean, sliced through his obsession. He couldn't be seen here. Not like this. Not as a desperate ghost haunting his hallway.
He turned and fled, soundless in his expensive sneakers, slipping down the stairwell just as he heard the deadbolt click and the door to Avery's apartment open tentatively behind him.
He didn't stop until he was back in his car, engine roaring to life. He drove a few blocks away before pulling over, his hands shaking on the wheel.
He had almost ruined everything. He'd let the madness touch the surface.
He took out his phone. His finger hovered over Avery's name. He had to say something. He had to fix this, to re-establish the narrative. He couldn't be the phantom at the door. He had to be the concerned classmate.
His thumbs moved, typing and erasing several drafts. Nothing sounded right. Everything felt like a lie exposed.
Finally, he sent something simple. Brutal in its simplicity.
Leo: You okay? I had a weird feeling tonight. Just checking.
It was a risk. It acknowledged a connection, an unexplained intuition. It made him seem… attuned to him. It could scare Avery further. Or it could feel like a lifeline thrown from someone who somehow knew.
He stared at the screen, waiting for the three dots to appear. The silence stretched. The echo of his own frantic heartbeat in the quiet car was deafening.
He wasn't a master architect. He was a boy losing his grip, standing in the ruins of his own design, hoping the prize would mistake his desperation for devotion.
The three dots never came.
But the message was delivered. And read.
The hook wasn't set with elegance. It was embedded now with the jagged, desperate force of a boy who had just pressed his forehead against a door and prayed for it to open.