Page 32 of What Goes Around

“Of course I didn’t fucking know,” I choked. “No one told me anything.”

No one dared.

I turned away before the pressure in my chest crushed me from the inside. I needed to move. I needed to breathe. I needed to get away from him before I shattered where I stood.

If she hadn’t been the one sending those messages…

That night, I tore through my apartment like a man possessed. I reread every message that had made me hate her. The ones that had ended us. The ones I’d never questioned.

But now, with new eyes, something felt wrong.

Subtle at first.

Then obvious.

The phrasing was off. The tone didn’t sit right. It was close enough to fool me then, close enough to feel real, but now it scraped against everything I knew about her.

Ashley never spelled things that way.

She never used emojis like that.

How the hell had I not seen it?

I tore through my closet until I found one of her sweaters, shoved behind a box like I’d been trying to forget it existed without actually throwing it away. My hands shook as I dragged it out and pressed it to my face.

Strawberries.

Faint now, barely there, but enough.

It hit me all at once.

I broke.

I collapsed onto the bed, my body folding in on itself, rocking like I could hold something together if I just held on tight enough. My fingers twisted in the fabric, clutching it like it was the last thing tethering me to her.

Her sweater. Her scent.

The last piece of her I had.

And then the thought came, cutting straight through me.

Did she have my child?

Were they out there somewhere? Without me?

For the first time in years, I prayed. Not because I believed in anything, but because I had nothing left to hold onto.

By morning I was at a police station.

“I’d like to report someone missing. Her name is Ashley Richards. She’s been gone for two years.”

The officer raised his brows. “Two years? Why report it now?”

“Because her family says she’s abroad,” I said tightly, “but nobody has heard from her. And something is wrong.”

He took the statement, but I saw the doubt in his eyes.

People disappear.