Chapter 15
Happy with what he heard, Liam figured he’d leave Victor and lean alone, so he returned to his ward.
He grabbed the phone that had been sitting on the table for days and turned it on. It felt like ages as the phone tool its sweet time to boot up.
With the news burning to be shared with Stephanie, Liam’s left hand trembled slightly as he entered his password. While the network loaded, he punched in her number and hit call.
The ringing seemed to go on forever until a robotic voice finally came through. “Sorry, the number you’ve dialed is temporarily unavailable. Please try
pain later.”
Unavailable?
Liam thought maybe Stephanie was in the elevator, but that didn’t seem right. A million thoughts ran through his mind.
He set the phone back on the table, opened WhatsApp, and tried messaging her through there
The moment he opened the app, his screen was swarmed with notifications. They were all from people checking in about his injury, and the sight of them gave him a headache,
After scrolling through a dozen messages without success, he opened his contacts to search for Stephanie. A few seconds later, her name popped up in the middle of the screen
Liam tapped on it, trying to decide whether to type or send a voice message when he saw the words at the bottom of the char
“Llam, we’re done.”
The timestamp read March 29th, 347 pm That was five days ag
Liam’s mind, racing only seconds before, suddenly went blank. He stared at the sentence, checked the date, and glanced up at the top of the screen.
It showed “Steph” with a “Do Not Disturb icon beside it. It was the contact he’d saved, and it was definitely Stephanie’s WhatsApp, but something felr
It seemed impossible that Stephanie would just end things out of the blue. Was she mad? Or was this some sort of prank?
Andiety clawed at Liam, but he kept malding excuses for her, desperately trying to explain it away.
He brought up the keyboard, ready to ask if this was some kind of punishment for losing a game, but his left hand wouldn’t listen, typing the wrong letters over and over.
Liam had no choice but to record a voice message. “Steph, I was in the hospital for an injury a few days ago and couldn’t reach you. Are you angry with
He let go of the screen, and his pho
and his phone dinged twice. He thought Stephanie had gotten back to him immediately as usual.
He quickly set his phone down to read her message, only to find a single gray checkmark next to his message, showing it had been sent but not delivered. The alerts he heard were from other messages coming in
Liam’s face went stiff as he stared at the tiny, glaring gray checkmark. He bent forward, frantically typing and firing off one message after another, only to see the same single gray checlunark on each message.
Refusing to believe it, Liam checked Stephanie’s Instagram, only to find she hadn’t accepted his follow request. He tried every platform he could think of but soon found out she’d blocked and deleted him on all of them.
Staring at the undelivered messages, Liam went still, and memories started flashing through his mind.
During his time in the hospital, Stephanie didn’t act like she usually did. She didn’t worry about where he’d gone or come to visit him.
The last time they saw each other was that morning, the day he screwed up his hand. She’d laid out a whole spread, saying it was to celebrate him, but he left
Liam remembered staying home for a few days after Maeve’s birthday party and noticing that a lot of things were gone, nearly all of which were things she had bought
ito remembered, further back, how she’d quietly left her job and burned a bunch of things one night. He couldn’t fully recall the details from that period, but his gut told him those fuzzy memories were important.
What exactly had she burned?
Liam remembered seeing the ashes of paper and letters. Those were the love letters she wrote to hing!
up for quite
quite a while.
Only now did he finally realize Stephanie wasn’t messing around. She was actually brealding up with him and had been building it up
