Chapter 6

The footsteps stopped outside Clara's door.

Sophie shoved the photograph into her jacket pocket just as the door swung open the rest of the way.

"There you are."

Ethan stood in the doorway, still in the jacket he'd probably worn to work, looking at her like he had every right to be standing there.

Sophie's pulse hadn't slowed down since the footsteps started. "What are you doing up here?"

"Your mom let me in," "I thought, maybe she'd left something in her room. Your mom said she'd already checked, but—" He glanced past her, at the room, at the drawer Sophie hadn't quite managed to push shut all the way. "What are you doing in Clara's room?"

"Looking for her too."

"Find anything?"

"No."

He studied her for a second too long. His eyes moved to her jacket pocket, just briefly, and Sophie made herself hold still, made herself not touch the pocket, not give him a single reason to ask twice.

"You seem tense," Ethan said.

"My sister's missing. I'm allowed to be tense."

"Right." He didn't move out of the doorway. "You'd tell me if you found something, though. Wouldn't you?"

Sophie thought about the warning from two nights ago, a stranger's voice on the phone telling her Noah wasn't on her side. She thought about the words on the back of the photograph, pressed so hard into the paper they'd almost torn through.

Don't let him see this.

She didn't know if Clara meant Ethan. She didn't know if she meant her father. She didn't know anything anymore, and that was exactly the problem—she couldn't investigate a single thing in this house with both of them watching her.

"Of course I would," Sophie said.

She slipped past him into the hallway before he could ask anything else, grabbed her keys off the table by the stairs, and left without telling her parents where she was going.

She still remembered the address. She wished she didn't.

Noah's apartment building was the kind with a buzzer that didn't work and a hallway light that flickered every few seconds. Sophie stood outside his door for a full minute before she made herself knock.

Footsteps. A pause. The door opened.

Noah looked at her, and for a second his face didn't do anything at all. Then it did.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Trust me." Sophie's voice came out flatter than she meant it to. "This is the last place I wanted to be."

He didn't move to let her in. He just stood there, one hand on the doorframe, looking at her like she was a problem he'd already solved once and didn't feel like solving again.

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I don't have a choice."

"You made it pretty clear years ago that you never wanted to see me again." His jaw tightened. "So what changed?"

"Nothing changed, Noah. I still don't want to see you." Sophie's hands curled at her sides. "But you spent years trying to convince me Ethan was lying to me. You never once explained why. You just kept saying it, over and over, like I was too stupid to see it myself."

"I told you what I could."

"You told me nothing. You just made me feel like garbage for trusting the person I was dating." Her voice rose before she could stop it. "And you know what? You were the one obsessed. Every time I turned around, you had something to say about him. About us. Like you couldn't stand that I was happy."

Something flickered behind Noah's eyes. "That's what you think this was about?"

"That's what it looked like."

"Yeah." His voice went quiet, almost bitter. "I remember exactly how it ended. You called me obsessed. You said I was trying to ruin his life because I couldn't stand seeing you with someone else."

Sophie's stomach dropped. She remembered too. She remembered the exact words she'd used, the way his face had gone still right before she slapped him, and the thing he'd said right after, low and furious.

One day, you're going to realize I was trying to save yours.

She'd hated him for that sentence more than almost anything else he'd ever said to her.

"I'm not here to relive that," Sophie said.

"Then why are you here?"

She pulled the photograph out of her jacket pocket and held it out.

Noah's eyes moved from her face to the photo, and whatever hostility had been sitting there a second ago disappeared completely. He took it from her hand slowly, like it might do something if he moved too fast.

He went still the moment he saw the boy with the scratched-out face.

"Where did you get this?"

"Clara's room. Hidden under a drawer." Sophie watched his face, looking for anything. "She wrote something on the back."

Noah turned it over. His expression didn't change, but his hand tightened on the edge of the photograph until his knuckles went pale.

"Noah." Sophie stepped closer. "What is this?"

He didn't answer.

"Clara is missing." Her voice cracked on the word, and she hated that it did. "I didn't come here to listen to you act mysterious because you enjoy making everyone else feel stupid."

"And I didn't ask to be dragged back into this because your sister decided to leave you clues." The words came out sharp and fast before he seemed to fully register what he'd said.

Sophie went still.

"What did you just say?"

Noah's jaw worked. He looked, for the first time since he'd opened the door, like he wanted to take something back.

"What do you know about Clara?" Sophie's voice was shaking now, and she didn't care. "Noah. What do you know?"

"I haven't seen her."

"That's not what I asked."

He hesitated, long enough that Sophie almost reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt just to make him answer.

"She messaged me," Noah said finally. "Two days ago."

Something hot and furious rose up in Sophie's chest. "Two days ago. She reached out to you two days ago, and you didn't tell anyone."

"It wasn't like that—"

"I ignored her for three weeks." Sophie's voice broke completely now. "Three weeks, Noah. And this whole time she was trying to reach you. You, of all people."

"Sophie—"

"Show me the message."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not mine to show you." His voice had gone hard again, defensive. "You don't get to show up here after years of hating me and demand I hand over everything I know."

"So you are hiding something."

"I'm protecting something. There's a difference."

"From me?"

"From everyone who might use it against her." Noah's eyes didn't leave hers. "You think you get to walk in here and act like you've been on Clara's side this whole time? You cut her off. You ignored her calls. You didn't even want to hear her name."

That landed exactly where he meant it to.

Sophie felt her throat close up, and for a second she couldn't say anything at all. She turned halfway toward the stairs, ready to leave, ready to be anywhere but standing in front of the one person who could make her feel this small this fast.

"Sophie, wait."

She stopped, but she didn't turn around.

"I don't think Ethan is the reason Clara disappeared," Noah said.

Sophie turned back slowly.

Noah's face had lost whatever hardness it had a moment ago. He looked, for the first time, like someone who was tired of carrying something alone.

"But he's the reason she's afraid."

Sophie opened her mouth to ask what that meant.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

She pulled it out, still half-focused on Noah, and unlocked the screen.

A photograph. Sent from an unknown number.

It took her a second to understand what she was looking at.

It was her. Standing outside this building, this exact doorway, taken from across the street. Her jacket. Her hair. The angle of her shoulders as she'd knocked on Noah's door minutes ago.

Beneath the image, a message.

YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO HIM.

Sophie's hand went cold around the phone.

She looked up at Noah.

Noah turned sharply toward the window.