Page 21 of Her Unending Horizon

I caved.

I texted.

Chloe: Hey. Just checking in. Are you okay?

The message went through. It said delivered. It never said read, but he’d changed his settings so they never said read, even when he had read a message.

I set the phone on the desk face-down like it had personally offended me and then I tried to sleep.

I didn’t.

The next day, I lasted until noon before I broke again.

Chloe: I’m worried. Please just tell me you’re alive.

Delete? Send? Delete? Send?

I hit send.

Two hours later, still nothing.

I sent one more, because I couldn’t not.

Chloe: I’m sorry if I said something wrong.

That one hurt to send. It felt like I was handing him my softest place on a silver platter.

The screen stayed stubbornly blank.

By the following afternoon, the knot in my chest had gone past worry into something colder. Not anger—not yet. Just a stunned kind of hurt.

That’s when I did something I hadn’t done since everything fell apart.

I called his best friend, Michael Rankin.

It took a minute to find his number. I hadn’t deleted it, just… buried it. When I finally tapped his name, my hands were shaking. If he didn’t answer, I decided I’d take it as a sign from the universe to mind my own business.

He answered on the second ring.

“Rankin.”

“Hey, Michael. It’s Chloe.”

There was a tiny beat of silence. “Hey, Chloe,” he said, voice softening. “Good to hear from you.”

“You too,” I lied automatically. “Sorry to bother you. I just—uh—wanted to ask how Zarek is.”

The line went quiet again, but this silence felt different. It was as if he wasn’t surprised I was asking. He chose his words carefully.

“He’s… breathing,” Michael said finally.

My stomach dropped. “That’s not funny.”

“Didn’t mean it to be.”

I sank onto the edge of my couch. “He hasn’t answered my last couple of calls. Or texts. I’m trying not to make that about me, but… it’s kind of feeling like it’s about me.”

Michael exhaled, the sound rough in my ear. “Can I come over?”