The room still held the cold from the lake.
Not enough to bite—but enough that Mira felt it settle into her skin as she pulled the sweater over her head, the fabric catching briefly on damp hair before falling into place. She tugged it down absently, smoothing it over her sides, trying to shake off the lingering chill that hadn’t fully left her since stepping out of the water.
Downstairs, faint movement carried through the floorboards.
Voices.
Muted.
Too far away to make out words.
She exhaled quietly and reached for the edge of the bed, steadying herself for a second she didn’t entirely need.
Something about the house still felt wrong.
Not loud.
Not obvious.
Just sitting under everything.
The door opened behind her.
No knock.
No hesitation.
Mira turned, instinct sharp enough to pull her around before the sound had fully registered.
Katarin stepped inside.
She didn’t say anything at first.
She just pushed the door shut behind her.
The click of it settling into place felt louder than it should have.
Mira blinked once. “Oh—”
The word came out lighter than she felt.
“Hey.”
Katarin didn’t answer right away.
She leaned back against the door for a second, hand still resting on the handle like she hadn’t fully let go of it yet. Her eyes moved across the room—not looking for anything in particular, just… taking it in.
Then they landed on Mira.
And stayed there.
Mira shifted slightly, tugging once more at the hem of her sweater, a small, unnecessary movement that gave her hands something to do.
“You okay?” she asked.
Katarin let out a quiet breath.
Not annoyed.
Not defensive.
Just… tight.
“You don’t like me,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
Mira blinked again, caught slightly off guard by how flat it sounded.
“What?”
Katarin pushed off the door slowly, taking a step into the room. “You don’t,” she repeated. “You never have.”
Mira frowned faintly, trying to place where it was coming from, how it had landed here, now, of all times.
“That’s not—” she started, then stopped, softer this time. “Why would you think that?”
Katarin gave a small, humorless huff.
“Because I’m not stupid.”
She took another step forward.
Not close enough to touch.
Close enough to feel.
“You’re nice,” she said, like the word didn’t quite fit what she meant. “You always have been. But it’s… different.”
Mira didn’t move.
“Different how?”
Katarin’s eyes flicked over her again, slower this time. “Like you’re doing it on purpose.”
The room felt smaller suddenly.
Not physically.
Just… closer.
Mira let out a small breath. “I’m not trying to be—whatever you think I’m being.”
“You don’t even know what I think,” Katarin said.
“Then tell me.”
The words came out softer than she meant them to.
Careful.
Measured.
Katarin stilled for a second.
Then something shifted in her expression.
Not anger.
Not exactly.
Something closer to… frustration.
Or maybe something deeper than that.
“You act like you don’t see it,” she said quietly.
Mira’s brow pulled slightly. “See what?”
Katarin didn’t answer right away.
She just stepped closer.
Close enough now that Mira could feel the shift in space between them—the way the room didn’t feel like it had as much air in it anymore.
Mira held her ground.
But her shoulders tightened just slightly.
“You really don’t get it,” Katarin said.
It wasn’t disbelief.
It was something quieter.
More certain.
And for the first time since she’d walked in—
Mira felt it.
Not just the tension.
Not just the awkwardness.
Something underneath it.
Something that didn’t feel like a normal conversation anymore.
“Katarin,” she said, careful now. “What are you talking about?”
Katarin’s gaze didn’t waver.
If anything—
it sharpened.
And the door behind her stayed closed.
Mira became aware of it in a way she hadn’t been a second earlier. Not just that Katarin had shut it, but that the sound of the latch settling had somehow changed the room. What had been a bedroom a moment ago—unmade beds, a soft pile of clothes on a chair, light slipping in from the window in a pale wash—now felt smaller, sealed off from the rest of the house in a way that made the air sit heavier in her lungs. The voices downstairs were still there if she listened for them, but they were blurred now, reduced to low movement under the floorboards, too distant to be useful.
Katarin did not look away.
That, more than anything, made Mira uneasy.
Usually Katarin’s attention moved quickly. It jumped around a room the way her conversations did, snagging on reactions, on who was listening, on whether she was getting what she wanted. Even when she focused on someone, there was usually a kind of performance in it, like she was half-aware of how she must look while doing it. But this was different. Her eyes stayed locked on Mira with a steadiness that didn’t feel performative at all. It felt stripped down. Too direct. Too personal.
Mira forced herself to stay still, though she had the sudden, sharp instinct to move—toward the bed, toward the window, toward literally anywhere that would change the shape of the room. Instead, she let her hands settle at the hem of her sweater again, fingers curling lightly into the fabric before she made herself stop.
“You’re making me feel like I missed part of the conversation,” she said, and she tried to keep the tone light, something close to nervous humor. “I genuinely don’t know what you mean.”
Katarin’s mouth twitched, but there was no real amusement in it. “That’s the problem.”
She said it quietly, and somehow that made it worse. If she had come in angry, if she had snapped or accused or raised her voice, Mira would have known how to answer it. She knew how to soften anger. She knew how to redirect irritation. This was something else. There was too much feeling in the room and not enough shape to it yet.
Katarin moved another step forward, and Mira felt herself react before she meant to, shoulders tightening just slightly as the distance between them narrowed. The bedroom suddenly felt full of details she hadn’t noticed before: the edge of Madaline’s bag hanging off the chair, the wrinkle in the quilt where someone had sat earlier, the line of sunlight on the floor creeping slowly toward the bedframe. All of it sharp. All of it useless.
“You do this thing,” Katarin said, and now her voice had softened too much, gone intimate in a way that immediately made Mira want to put space back between them. “You act like you’re so sweet, and you are, which somehow makes it worse, because it means I never know if you actually don’t understand or if you just don’t want to.”
Mira frowned. “Don’t want to what?”
“See me.”
The words landed with more force than they should have, not because they were loud but because they were so plainly meant. Mira stared at her for a second, trying to fit the sentence into something that made sense. There were too many versions of it. Too many directions it could go, and all of them felt wrong for the room, for the timing, for the fact that there was a man missing and something deeply off about the entire day and yet somehow all of that had been pulled aside for this.
“I do see you,” Mira said carefully. “What are you talking about?”
Katarin gave a small, frustrated shake of her head, and for the first time since she’d walked in, some of that brittle composure cracked. “No, you don’t. Not really. You’re nice to me because you’re nice to everyone. That’s not the same thing.”
Mira’s stomach tightened.
There it was now. Not fully, but close enough to touch. The shape under the conversation. The thing that had been pressing against the edges of it from the moment Katarin shut the door.
“Katarin,” she said, quieter now, “if this is about earlier, or the trip, or if you’re upset with me about something, you can just say that.”
“It’s not about earlier.” Katarin’s eyes sharpened. “It’s not about one thing.”
She looked down for a second, and when she looked back up again, something in her face had changed. The irritation was still there, but it had sunk under something more raw, something that made Mira’s chest tighten with a different kind of caution.
“Do you know how long I’ve liked you?” Katarin asked.
The room seemed to go very still.
Mira felt the words before she processed them. Not their meaning exactly—she understood that instantly—but the weight of them, the way they changed everything that had come before. The look. The tone. The closed door. The accusation hidden inside every sentence.
“Katarin…”
She didn’t know what she meant to put in the name. A warning, maybe. Or just a plea for the conversation to slow down enough that she could catch up to it.
Katarin laughed, but it came out thin and shaky, more like disbelief than humor. “See? That. That face. You always do that face.”
Mira’s confusion pulled tighter. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You are.” Katarin stepped even closer. “You look at me like I’ve said something embarrassing, like I’m about to make this awkward and you already know you’re going to have to be nice about it.”
Mira took a small step back before she could stop herself.
The movement was instinctive, not dramatic, but Katarin noticed it immediately. Of course she did. Her eyes dropped briefly to Mira’s feet and then lifted again, and that tiny shift somehow made the whole room feel more dangerous than if she’d raised her voice.
“You see?” Katarin said softly. “That’s what I mean.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“You never have to try.” There was no anger in the interruption, which made it hit harder. “That’s the worst part. Everything is so easy for you. You don’t even know what you’re doing half the time, do you?”
Mira stared at her. “I really don’t know what you want me to say right now.”
“Something honest.”
The answer came too fast, too sharp. Then Katarin exhaled and dragged a hand over her face as if she hated that it had come out like that. “Just—something that isn’t you trying to make this easier on me.”
Mira didn’t speak for a second.
Because honesty, real honesty, had edges too. And she could feel them already. She knew this kind of moment. Knew the exact shape of what came after if you said the wrong thing too plainly. People liked to believe bluntness was kinder, but most of the time it just made blood show faster.
“I’m not trying to make anything easier,” she said at last, and she kept her voice gentle because she didn’t know any other way to hold a conversation like this without breaking it. “I just… didn’t know.”
Katarin’s expression didn’t soften.
“How could you not know?”
The question wasn’t rhetorical. That was what made it so impossible to answer. Katarin meant it. There was real hurt sitting underneath it now, obvious enough that Mira felt a flicker of guilt even through her discomfort. Not because she had done anything wrong—not really—but because she understood, suddenly, that whatever had been building in Katarin had been building alone. And loneliness had a way of turning ordinary things into proof.
“Because I thought you were just…” Mira stopped herself. She almost said being you, and knew instantly that would sound cruel even if she meant it neutrally. She tried again. “I thought you liked attention. I thought you were being playful. I didn’t know it was serious.”
Katarin looked at her for a long moment.
Then she smiled in a way that made Mira wish she hadn’t.
“Of course you did.”
The words were soft. Too soft. There was hurt in them now, but something else too—something tightening around it, turning it into shape.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Katarin said. “You reduce everything. You make it small enough that you don’t have to deal with it. Playful. Attention-seeking. Dramatic. Like if you use the right word, then it doesn’t count.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?” Katarin asked. “Then what is fair?”
Mira opened her mouth and closed it again.
Katarin stepped closer still, near enough now that Mira could smell lake water and perfume and something sharper underneath, something nervous and overheated. Her eyes were bright, too bright, and Mira realized with a sudden chill that this had gone past confession already. Whatever Katarin wanted from this moment, it wasn’t just to say it out loud. She wanted something back. An answer. A change. A wound that matched her own.
“Do you know how hard it is,” Katarin said, voice lowering even further, “to watch you move through people like this? Like you don’t even have to try? Madaline, Ethan, all of them. Everyone just… gravitates toward you. And you stand there looking confused, like it’s some accident.”
Mira’s breath caught on Madaline’s name, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because hearing it in this room, in this tone, made everything feel more exposed than it already had. She became suddenly aware of the two beds again, of which one belonged to whom, of how private this space had felt right up until it didn’t.
“This isn’t about them,” Mira said.
“It is to me.”
Katarin’s voice didn’t rise.
That was the part Mira kept struggling against. If she had shouted, if she had cried, if she had become visibly unsteady, Mira would have known what to do. But she kept staying contained, and that containment felt far more dangerous than if she’d broken open completely.
“I see the way you look at him,” Katarin said.
Mira’s face changed before she could stop it.
Just slightly.
But enough.
Katarin saw it and something in her expression tightened with vindication so immediate it made Mira’s stomach drop.
“There,” she said. “There it is.”
“You’re reading into things.”
“Am I?” Katarin asked. “Or do you just hate being seen when it’s inconvenient?”
Mira took another small step back, and this time the backs of her knees caught the edge of the bed. She hadn’t realized how far the room had narrowed until then. The mattress pressed lightly behind her, reminding her how little space she actually had left.
Katarin noticed that too.
For a second, neither of them spoke.
Downstairs, something thudded faintly. A cabinet, maybe. A footstep. The house moving around other people who had no idea what was happening in here.
Mira held onto that sound harder than she wanted to admit.
“Katarin,” she said again, and now there was more caution in it than softness, though she tried to keep both. “I think you should go downstairs.”
Katarin went very still.
Then she laughed once under her breath, and this time it sounded wounded. “There it is.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Mira’s fingers curled at her sides. “This isn’t helping anything.”
“Helping?” Katarin repeated. “You think I came in here to help?”
The question sat between them, and in it Mira heard something she hadn’t wanted to name before: not just obsession, not just hurt, but resentment. Old and layered and deeply personal. The kind that had been fed over time. The kind that didn’t arrive in a room suddenly—it had been carried there.
Katarin’s eyes moved over her face, slower now, and when she spoke again her voice had gone softer than ever.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like,” she asked, “to always be outside of things when you’re in them?”
Mira didn’t answer.
“To be right there,” Katarin went on, “and still somehow not count the same? To always be too much, too loud, too obvious, while you get to just stand there being effortlessly wanted?”
The words made the room feel warmer, tighter.
Mira could feel the line now—the one where sympathy ended and something more dangerous began. Whatever pain sat under Katarin’s confession was real. But it was no longer the only thing in the room. It had twisted into something possessive and sharp, something that was less about being known and more about forcing itself to be answered.
“I never asked for that,” Mira said quietly.
“That’s exactly why I hate it.”
The honesty of the answer hit harder than if it had been shouted.
And suddenly Mira understood something she didn’t want to.
No answer she gave now was going to make this better.
Not really.
Because this was no longer about what she did or didn’t say. Katarin had walked into the room already carrying the version of it she needed. Mira was only just now catching up to the fact that she had never really been invited to change it.
Outside the bedroom, the house stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
And behind Katarin, somewhere beyond the closed door and the narrow hall, something shifted almost soundlessly—
though neither of them noticed it yet.
The room held its shape around them, but it didn’t feel the same anymore.
Something had shifted.
Not in the space itself—the bed was still where it had been, the window still casting the same pale strip of light across the floor—but in the way Mira felt inside it. The distance between her and Katarin had narrowed to something uncomfortable, something charged, and it didn’t feel like a conversation anymore. It felt like standing in the path of something that had already decided where it was going.
Katarin didn’t step back.
If anything, she leaned into the stillness, like she’d found her footing in it.
Mira stayed where she was, the edge of the bed pressing into the backs of her legs, anchoring her in place whether she wanted it to or not. She could feel the faint dampness still clinging to her skin under the sweater, the way the fabric warmed against it, and the sensation suddenly made her more aware of everything else—the quiet, the air, the fact that the door was still closed behind Katarin.
“You’re not saying anything,” Katarin said.
Her voice had softened again, but it wasn’t gentler. It was more focused. More deliberate.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Mira answered, and this time she didn’t try to hide the tension in it.
Katarin studied her face like she was searching for something specific. “That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“No,” Katarin said quietly, shaking her head once. “You just don’t want to say it.”
Mira exhaled slowly, trying to keep her voice even. “Okay. Then tell me what you think I’m supposed to say, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.”
For a second, Katarin didn’t respond.
Then she took one more step forward.
Close enough now that Mira could feel the heat of her through the space between them, close enough that if either of them shifted even slightly, they would touch.
Mira didn’t move.
She didn’t want to give the moment more weight than it already had.
“You’re supposed to say you knew,” Katarin said.
The words were quiet, almost steady.
“You’re supposed to say you just didn’t know what to do about it.”
Mira’s chest tightened. “That wouldn’t be true.”
Katarin’s expression flickered.
Something sharp passed through it—something that didn’t fully settle into anger but didn’t disappear either.
“Then you’re supposed to say you feel something back,” she said, a little faster now. “Even if it’s not the same. Even if it’s not as much. Just… something.”
Mira held her gaze.
And for a second, she thought about softening it. About giving her something small, something gentle enough to land without cutting too deep. It would have been easy. A half-truth. A careful phrasing. Something that made the moment pass instead of break.
But she knew, instinctively, that it wouldn’t actually help.
It would just make the next moment worse.
“I don’t,” she said.
The honesty sat between them immediately.
Too clear.
Too simple.
Katarin didn’t react right away.
She just stared at her.
And in that silence, Mira realized something that made her stomach drop slightly.
Katarin hadn’t expected her to answer like that.
Not really.
“You don’t,” Katarin repeated.
Not a question.
Not even disbelief.
Just… confirmation.
Mira shook her head once, small but firm. “I don’t.”
Katarin let out a breath.
It wasn’t loud.
But it felt like something inside her had just shifted out of place.
“That’s actually insane,” she said softly.
Mira’s brow pulled. “What is?”
“That you can say it like that.”
There was something unsteady in her voice now, but it wasn’t falling apart—it was tightening.
“Like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Mira said, more quickly than she meant to. “I just—”
She stopped.
Because anything she added to that sentence felt like it would make it worse.
Katarin noticed.
Of course she did.
“You just what?” she pressed.
Mira didn’t answer.
The silence stretched.
Katarin’s gaze dropped briefly—to Mira’s mouth, her shoulder, the line of her sweater—and then came back up again, sharper than before.
“You just don’t feel anything,” she finished for her.
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
“No,” Mira said, and now there was more edge in it than she intended. “I said I don’t feel that way about you. That’s not the same thing.”
Katarin laughed again, but it came out wrong this time.
Too sharp.
“It is to me.”
Mira’s grip on the edge of the sweater tightened slightly. “That doesn’t make it true.”
“It makes it real.”
The words landed harder than anything else she’d said.
Because that part wasn’t wrong.
The feeling in the room—the tension, the hurt, the closeness—it was real.
And it wasn’t going away.
Katarin stepped closer again.
There was barely any space left now.
Mira could feel the shift in her own breathing, the way her body had started bracing without her telling it to. The bed behind her, the closed door, the narrowness of the room—it all pressed in at once.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” Katarin said quietly.
Mira didn’t answer.
“It’s not even that you don’t feel the same,” she went on. “It’s that you never even considered it. Not once.”
Mira’s eyes flicked away for a second.
That was all it took.
Katarin saw it, and something in her expression snapped into place—not explosive, not loud, just… decided.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “That’s what I thought.”
Mira looked back at her, more carefully now. “Katarin—”
“No,” Katarin cut in, just as quiet. “Don’t.”
Mira stilled.
Katarin’s eyes didn’t leave hers.
“Don’t say my name like that,” she said. “Like you’re trying to calm me down.”
The words landed flat, but there was something underneath them now that made Mira’s chest tighten again.
Something that didn’t feel like a conversation anymore.
Something that felt like it had crossed into something else.
Mira swallowed. “I’m not trying to—”
“You are,” Katarin said. “You always are.”
The room went quiet again.
Not empty.
Just… waiting.
Mira felt it then.
Clearer than before.
The shift.
Not just in Katarin—but in the moment itself.
Whatever this had been when she walked in—
it wasn’t that anymore.
And for the first time since the door had closed behind them—
Mira felt something sharper than discomfort settle in her chest.
Something closer to fear.
It settled low in Mira’s chest, quiet but certain, the kind that didn’t spike or panic—just held, steady and alert, like her body had already decided this moment needed more attention than she’d been giving it.
Katarin didn’t step back.
She stepped closer.
The last bit of space between them disappeared almost without Mira noticing it happen, until suddenly there wasn’t room to move without making it obvious. Mira could feel the warmth of her now, the closeness pressing in, the way Katarin’s breathing had shifted—quicker, uneven, but controlled in a way that made it feel intentional.
Mira held still.
Her back brushed the edge of the bed again, grounding her in place. She didn’t want to step away. Didn’t want to escalate whatever this was into something sharper.
“Katarin,” she said, quieter now, more careful than before. “You’re too close.”
Katarin didn’t move.
Her eyes flicked over Mira’s face, slower than before, taking in details in a way that made Mira’s stomach tighten further.
“You don’t get to decide that,” Katarin said softly.
The words didn’t sound angry.
They sounded certain.
Mira’s fingers curled slightly at her sides. “I do, actually.”
“No,” Katarin said, just as quietly. “You decide everything else. Not this.”
She leaned in.
Closer.
Mira could see the shift in her expression now—something intense and fixed, something that had moved past hurt and settled into something else entirely. Not calm. Not unstable in the way Mira expected either.
Just… decided.
“You don’t even realize what you do to people,” Katarin murmured.
Mira shook her head once, trying to keep her voice steady. “Katarin, this isn’t—”
“Don’t,” Katarin said again.
She was close enough now that Mira could feel the words more than hear them.
Mira’s heart picked up, just slightly.
Not panic.
Not yet.
But something sharper.
“Just—” Katarin started, her voice dropping further, almost breath against Mira’s skin. “Stop acting like you don’t know.”
Mira’s gaze flicked past her for half a second.
Not intentional.
Just instinct.
Movement—
behind her.
Too subtle to fully register at first. A shift in the air. A presence where there hadn’t been one before.
Katarin didn’t notice.
Mira’s eyes snapped back to her face.
“What?” Katarin asked, catching the flicker.
Mira opened her mouth—
And didn’t get the chance to answer.
A hand came from behind Katarin.
Fast.
Precise.
It clamped over her mouth before the sound could form, fingers locking tight enough that the sudden noise she tried to make died instantly against skin.
Her body jerked in shock.
The other movement followed just as quickly.
A blade—clean, controlled—dragged across her throat in one sharp motion.
Mira didn’t understand what she was seeing for half a second.
It happened too fast.
Too clean.
Katarin’s eyes widened, confusion hitting before anything else. Her hands flew up instinctively, grabbing at the arm holding her, at the air, at nothing that could stop it.
The sound she made was strangled, trapped completely under the hand over her mouth.
Then—
blood.
It came all at once, dark and immediate, spilling between fingers, down her neck, across the front of her shirt in a rush that made Mira’s stomach drop so hard she felt it in her knees.
Mira stumbled back a step, hitting the bed fully this time.
Her hands came up without thinking, fingers hovering uselessly in front of her like she could stop something that had already happened.
Katarin thrashed once.
Twice.
Her nails scraped against skin—against him—but it didn’t matter.
He held her steady.
Controlled.
Unshaken.
Mira’s eyes lifted.
And landed on him.
Kane.
There was no hesitation in him.
No panic.
No rush.
His expression was… calm.
Focused.
Like this was something he had already decided long before stepping into the room.
Katarin’s body weakened quickly.
Too quickly.
Her grip lost strength, fingers slipping, movements turning uneven before dropping entirely.
Kane let her go.
She collapsed to the floor in a heavy, uneven motion, the sound of it hitting the room harder than anything else had.
Silence followed.
Not complete.
Mira could still hear her own breathing—too fast now, uneven, catching in her throat.
She couldn’t look away.
Her gaze stayed locked on the body, on the blood spreading too quickly, on the reality of it settling in piece by piece in a way her mind couldn’t keep up with.
Then—
slowly—
her eyes lifted again.
Back to Kane.
He stood over Katarin like nothing had just broken apart in front of them.
Like the room hadn’t changed.
Like he hadn’t just—
Mira’s breath hitched.
Her hands trembled slightly where they hovered in front of her, unsure whether to move, to reach, to do anything at all.
Her voice didn’t come out at first.
When it did, it was barely there.
“…Kane?”
The name felt wrong in her mouth.
Too small.
Too normal for what was standing in front of her.
He looked at her then.
Really looked.
And for the first time—
Mira didn’t recognize him.
Her body went completely still.
Her chest tightened.
And the only thing she could do—
was stare.