Packing up the house goes about as well as playing nine innings with two broken hands. Everything smells like her, feels like her. I can see her pale curves laid out on my comforter as I fold it and stuff it in the trunk. There are tiny red strands scattered on my sheets and pillows. Little love notes she'd doodled and stuck into the pockets of my jeans litter my desk.

I can't even step foot in her room. Minka has to pack it up and has it all shipped back to the O'Brien's mansion in Mitchum.

No one knows where Kelsey escaped to. Minka and I have called her phone 50 times a day each. Chloe hasn't heard a peep from her. If I was worried the first day she left, I'm in a downright perpetual state of panic now.

All I do is sleep, pace the house, go for runs and spend hours on my computer. Hours spent trying to track her down. Obsessively checking her social media to see if she updates one single thing. I have calls in to Jackson, which wasn't pleasant or easy since I still want to sucker punch the guy in the gut, to alert me if anyone at any preserve around the globe sees her.

But she's gone. Her phone has been off for a week, no way to trace it. We've filled her voicemail until we can no longer leave pleading, threatening, crying messages. I feel like a helpless, scared child.

Kelsey's always been impulsive, but I have never seen her more emotionally raw in my life than when she was standing in that trailer doorway, scorching earth beneath her feet. She had a wild, untamed look in her eye. She might be doing something stupid, dangerous. And I couldn't do anything but wait by the phone.

To make matters worse, I have nothing to distract me from it. After leaving the college house and coming back to Alabama, I don’t know what to do with myself. None of the non-profits I reached out to have called, no new job offers put on the table. I mostly spend my days now sitting on my parents old ass couch in their tiny ass ranch.

Don't get me wrong, I love my parents. I made peace with their faults long ago, and vowed to never to settle into the same path. But I can't help but feel depressed. The one thing that made my life bright and sunny was Kelsey, and now she's disappeared. Vanished.

And it’s all my fault.

I knew I never should have kept my suspicions from her. I should have spilled to her in the car on the way home from the preserve the first time I ever met Jackson. But instead, I'd internalized it. Made it my mission not to hurt her. And by doing so, I'd sliced her heart right open.

I still can't get that horrified look on her beautiful face out of my brain. It’s ingrained on it, branded into my skull. It haunts me when I do manage to fall asleep.

Mom and dad don't know what to make of me and my new attitude. They've called my brothers, all three of them stopping by at some point or another to lend a wise word, a shoulder to lean on. None of it helps. I can't shake the slump I'm in, and part of me doesn't want to. Pain is the only thing I can feel right now, and I welcome it. Crave it.

I'm lying on my back in the grass behind my parent's house, melodramatically contemplating my life that has gone to shitwhen my phone rings. Startled, I immediately jack up to a sitting position, adrenaline and hope surging through my veins. It’s what I do every time the phone rings these days. It could be Kelsey.

But it’s not. Only Miles, the obnoxious picture of him crossing his eyes flashing across the screen.

"What's up?" I answer.

"Nice to hear from you too, buddy. Miss you, hope you're doing well."

His voice is dripping with sarcasm and goofiness, typical Farris, but I'm not in the mood.

"Yeah, yeah. Was there something you needed?"

"Fine, man. I wanted to uh...to let you know something."

My stomach does that weird twist it has always done right before I left the locker room for a game. Maybe he has news about Kelsey. But his voice sounds off. Suddenly I don't know if I want to hear it. He doesn't give me the chance to stop him.

"Kels has been staying with us the past three weeks."

It feels as though I've just been beaned in the skull by a wild pitch. What did he just say?

"Huh?" I shake my head, trying to clear the fuzzy shock clouding my thought process.

"She flew straight here from Virginia, she didn't even have a bag. Chloe met her outside, she was like a zombie, Clint. Still is. Thing is-"

"You fucking knew where she was this whole time and you both fucking lied to me?!" I am practically screaming through the phone. The violence in my blood is visceral, I want to reach through the phone and grab Miles by the throat.

"Dude, I know. I'm fucking sorry-"

"YOU'RE SORRY?! I have been going out of my goddamn mind trying to track her down. Worried sick about her. And she's been sleeping in your cushy penthouse for three fucking weeks? Fuck you, Farriston."

I think I hear him wince on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry, man. I just...we didn't know what happened. And let me clarify that we live in a third floor walkup..."

"Farris." My voice is deadly quiet. He seems to get the message.

"We didn't know what happened. She won't talk about it, just keeps knocking herself out with sleeping pills and junk food. She's left our spare bedroom all of four times. Chloe told me we needed to give her her space, let her process. But...something's changed, man. I think you need to get up here."

The knots forming in my stomach twist. "What's changed? What do you mean?"

"Dude, just...you need to get up here."

I only stay on the phone long enough to get his address. Then I'm running inside to throw clothes into a backpack and book a flight.