Page 28 of Vega

NOVELLA “NOVI” HART

The police had no suspects. There had been no witnesses or clear explanation for why Kash had driven to a remote area. He had been found in the driver’s seat of his car with a single bullet wound to the right side of his head. There were no broken windows, damage to the locks, or signs of a struggle inside the car. His clothes weren’t torn. His hands didn’t have defensive wounds. So, whoever killed him hadn’t forced their way inside. Kash had either let that person into the car or had gotten in willingly with them. That detail tortured me. He knew his killer, and it terrified me that I had no idea who that person was.

Kash had never given me reasons to believe his life was in immediate danger. I knew he had connections to the street, but danger had always felt distant. That life was never supposed to come close to or harm me. It wasn’t supposed to leave me standing in a morgue identifying his body, because his mother and sister couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

He had promised to come back. That promise replayed in my head until the memory became cruel.

Since his death, I barely ate. Sleep came in short pieces and ended with me reaching across the bed for someone who wasn’t there. Sometimes I cried until my head hurt. Other times, I sat completely still because even breathing felt like more effort than I had left. The house smelled less like him every day, and that scared me. I could survive the silence. I could survive seeing his shoes near the door and his toothbrush beside mine. I didn’t know if I could survive forgetting the way he smelled.

I had also quit my job. Grief had made me useless. There wasn’t a number of bereavement days that could make me functional again. Three weeks, five months, two years; none of it would’ve been enough to teach me how to work while the man I loved was in the ground.

Luckily, Kash had paid all the bills, so I had saved enough to survive for a while without rushing back into a life that no longer felt like mine anymore.

That afternoon, I walked into the closet I had built for him inside one of the guest bedrooms. I had designed everything myself when we were running out of space in our shared walk-in closet.

At the time, building it had felt like another step towards forever. Now, it felt like a room preserved after the end of the world.

I walked between the racks and touched his clothes. The freshly cleaned shirts only smelled like detergent. The jogging suits smelled like the dry cleaner. I needed something he had worn recently, something I could press against my face and smell his aroma and sweat.

When I lifted a heavy black jacket from its hanger, something slipped from the inside pocket and struck the carpet.

Looking down, I saw it was a phone. I stared at it for several seconds, just looking at it. It wasn’t the phone the police had returned to me. That one sat on my nightstand, still full of unanswered calls and messages I had sent after he was already dead. I had never seen this phone before.

Grief had already taken enough from me. The idea that Kash might have been lying about us too made me afraid to pick it up.

Still, I lowered myself onto the carpet and pressed the power button.

The screen lit as it powered on.

It had a six-digit code. Kash had never hidden passwords from me. I knew the password to his main phone, debit cards, and even streaming service.

I entered the same six digits he used for everything important, and the phone unlocked.

My hands started trembling as I opened the call history first.

Most of the numbers had no names attached. The calls were short and spread out over several months. Nothing immediately looked personal.

Then I opened the text messages.

I braced myself for heart emojis, sexy pictures, and some woman calling him baby and asking when he planned to leave me. There was none of that, though.

Relief hit me so hard that I started crying. Even dead, Kash hadn’t made me a fool. I pressed one hand over my mouth and let the tears fall while I searched through the messages. Most were brief exchanges about locations, times, and money. I didn’t recognize any of the names or understand what the conversations meant.

One thread stood out because the contact was Kash’s main number. He had sent a message from the phone I knew to the phone in my hand. The message had been written three weeks earlier.

Novi, if you found this, something happened to me. Contact the Cartiers at this number. Tell them Kash sent you and give them this phone. Trust them. I’m sorry. I love you.

I read it again.

Then a third time.

The words blurred through my tears.

I looked at the final words again.

I love you.

“I love you too,” I whispered, hating that he couldn’t hear me.