Connie's fingers trembled as she sifted through the ashes one last time. Her nails were blackened, fingertips raw, but she couldn't stop. Something inside her screamed that something crucial was buried here, and she wouldn't leave without it, no matter the cost.
Her hand caught on a singed corner of glossy paper, stuck to the floorboard, partially melted. She peeled it up slowly, careful not to tear it further. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
A photo. Burnt around the edges, warped by fire and time.
Two boys. One of them unmistakably Aiden — younger, a little rounder in the face, but those eyes were the same. That guarded steel beneath the surface. Standing beside him was another kid, taller, gangly, with a crooked smile and a hand slung around Aiden's shoulder like they were brothers or inmates.
The background was a dull institutional wall, just the faintest hint of peeling paint and the edge of a plaque barely visible in the corner. She squinted.
St. Jerome Boys Home — Chicago, IL.
"Oh God," she whispered, her voice breaking under the weight of the moment. "Shade was there. He was there."
The boy beside Aiden didn't matter. Not really. What mattered was that someone — someplace — still connected him to the city. To her.
Her breath hitched. Desperation clawed through her veins like fire. She pressed the photo to her lips, breathing in its burnt scent as if she could taste the past itself.
"You didn't just vanish," she said, voice low and fierce. "You ran. They sent you away. Or you got out. But you're not lost. Not to me."
Her eyes glittered with a dangerous light. Fear had once held her tight — fear of the gangs she betrayed, of the bodies falling like flies. But that fear was shrinking, swallowed by something fiercer: obsession. Purpose. A hunger for the truth, for him.
She tucked the photo deep into her coat, close to her heart.
"I'm coming for you, Shade. I'll dig through every record, every file, every face until I find you."
She wiped her face, smearing soot across her cheek like war paint.
"And when I do… We'll be together again. Just like we were supposed to."
The sound of the forest swelled around him — wind weaving through the trees like whispered secrets, branches creaking, leaves rustling underfoot. Shade stood still in the clearing behind his house, just beyond the tree line, where morning light spilled in gold streaks between the pine trunks. He'd come out to think, to breathe, to shake off the weight pressing down inside his chest ever since the party.
But it hadn't worked.
[Same time in FORKS…]
He glanced back toward the house — quiet, empty. Steve still slept after the graveyard shift. The others had left hours ago, Jessica last, her kiss still lingering in his mind, a confusing warmth he wasn't ready to understand.
Still, the calm felt hollow.
Something was wrong.
Not in the forest. Not around him. Inside him.
A darkness pressed close—unseen, but alive. It curled around his thoughts like smoke, a shadow that clawed and whispered, a presence feeding on his fears. It wasn't a voice but a cold weight, crushing his chest, tightening around his throat.
It whispered: Go back. Be the hard one again. Be ruthless. Survive by any means.
Shade's mind wrestled with the pull of that shadow, grappling with its poison. His demeanor — once cold steel, sharp and unyielding — now softened, brittle beneath the surface. The hard edge had dulled. The boy who'd thrown punches to survive was hiding, retreating into silence and small, cautious steps.
His hand slid to his side, fingers brushing the familiar bulk of his Glock beneath the hoodie — a fragile anchor in the storm. Mrs. P had drilled it into him: Always be ready. Especially when something inside feels like it's breaking.
He stared deeper into the woods. A shadow shifted — just a deer, he told himself. But he didn't move.
A breath.
A pull.
He couldn't explain it, but something far away — miles, states even — reached him through the dark. Someone is thinking about him. Watching.
Shade's jaw clenched.
"I'm not going back," he muttered, voice rough but quieter than before. "That life's over."
But the dark presence lingered, unyielding, whispering in the spaces between his thoughts: It never ended. You just ran.
He turned from the woods, fists jammed in pockets, shoulders tight with tension. He needed to focus — school, Steve, the fragile peace he was trying to hold.
But the darkness followed, silent and waiting.
And far away — in Chicago — someone was already pulling the thread he didn't know he'd left behind.