Ghosted

Skylar

If I ever found out who invented tequila, I was going to have some very strong words with them.

Preferably after I’d located a bottle of painkillers, consumed approximately three gallons of water, and convinced someone to remove the construction equipment currently operating inside my skull.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d done to deserve the headache I woke up with, but I suspected it involved Cole Mercer’s party, a questionable amount of alcohol, and my inability to refuse a challenge when someone told me I couldn’t handle something.

That last one had gotten me into trouble before.

According to my mother, it was a personality flaw. According to my older brother, Owen, it was evidence that I’d been dropped on my head as a baby. Personally, I preferred to think of it as an adventurous spirit, although my adventurous spirit was currently making me wish I’d never been born.

I kept my eyes closed for another minute, hoping the pounding behind my forehead would eventually settle into something manageable. It wasn’t the sharp, nauseating pain I usually associated with a hangover. Instead, it felt like a heavy pressure somewhere deep inside my head, accompanied by a peculiar ringing in my ears that seemed to come and go without warning.

Eventually, I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a ceiling that definitely didn’t belong to me.

I recognized the dark wooden beams almost immediately, along with the crooked ceiling fan Nate had been promising to replace since Christmas. The living room curtains were partially open, allowing sunlight to spill across the hardwood floor and illuminate the familiar collection of furniture he’d accumulated through what I could only assume was a combination of thrift stores and questionable judgment.

I was lying on his stupid, uncomfortable leather couch.

I turned my head toward the coffee table, expecting to find a glass of water or perhaps a note explaining why I’d been abandoned downstairs. Instead, there was a television remote, a crumpled fast-food receipt, and the same ridiculous football-shaped coaster I’d been threatening to throw away for months.

Nathan Walker was going to hear about this.

For someone who insisted he knew how to treat a woman, he had a remarkable talent for forgetting basic hospitality whenever it suited him. Granted, our particular arrangement didn’t exactly come with rules about breakfast in bed or romantic gestures, but I thought providing a pillow was a fairly reasonable expectation.

Especially considering I’d spent the night on his couch rather than in his bed.

I sat up carefully, pushing my hair away from my face while trying to remember how I’d gotten there. I was still wearing the white tank top and denim shorts I’d chosen for the party, along with the little silver bracelet my parents had given me for graduation. My sneakers were on my feet, although one had come untied, and my hair felt like it had spent the night fighting a losing battle against a particularly aggressive windstorm.

The party itself wasn’t difficult to remember.

Cole had invited practically everyone we knew, which wasn’t particularly impressive considering Morristown had the social diversity of a large family reunion. Half the people there had grown up together, the other half had dated each other at some point, and there was a very good chance someone would end the evening crying in the driveway.

I’d arrived with Owen and Nate, although we’d made a point of behaving like three perfectly ordinary people who had absolutely nothing to hide.

Which was becoming increasingly difficult.

Nate and I had been sneaking around since his last break from college, when one particularly stupid decision had turned into another, followed by several more that neither of us seemed especially interested in regretting.

We’d agreed it was casual. No expectations, no complications, and definitely no telling my brother that his best friend had developed a rather enthusiastic interest in his little sister.

So far, the arrangement had worked beautifully.

Well, apart from the occasional moment when he looked at me across a crowded room and I forgot how to behave like a functioning member of society.

I remembered him doing exactly that at Cole’s party.

He’d been standing near the back porch with a drink in his hand, talking to Owen while I sat with my best friend, Harper, beside the pool. When our eyes met, he’d given me that infuriating little smile that always made me want to do something incredibly irresponsible.

I remembered smiling back.

After that, my memories became annoyingly scattered. There had been music, laughter, and someone arguing about the rules of beer pong. I vaguely remembered walking toward the house, but the details refused to settle into anything recognizable.

Perhaps Nathan had driven me home after I’d had too much to drink.

That seemed reasonable enough.

What wasn’t reasonable was leaving me downstairs like an unwanted overnight guest.

I glanced around for my phone, hoping to check the time, but couldn’t see it anywhere. There was no point searching the couch cushions while my head felt like this, so I decided to find Nate instead.

The house was quiet as I made my way toward the staircase. Nate lived in a two-story place he’d rented since returning to Morristown for the summer, and despite my frequent criticism of his decorating abilities, I’d quite liked it here. The kitchen was bright, the front porch overlooked a tree-lined street, and his bedroom had an enormous window that caught the afternoon sunlight.

Not that I spent much time admiring the window.

I smiled to myself as I climbed the stairs, already imagining his expression when I informed him that he’d officially lost his cuddling privileges.

His shower turned off just as I reach the second floor, and I could hear someone moving around in his bedroom. His door stood wide open, which I took as an invitation because knocking had never been a particularly important part of our relationship.

I walked into his room and found him standing in front of his closet with a dark towel wrapped around his waist.

His hair was damp, and he was examining two T-shirts as though the decision between them might just make or break his day. I took a step and then stood still, allowing myself a moment to appreciate the view before remembering that I was supposed to be annoyed with him.

“Well, isn’t this lovely? You get a shower and a comfortable bed while I wake up downstairs feeling like someone ran over my head with your truck.”

Nate didn’t respond immediately. He was still facing the closet, apparently distracted by whatever complicated fashion crisis he was experiencing.

I folded my arms and continued, explaining that his couch should probably be reported to the authorities and that I expected a formal apology, preferably accompanied by breakfast from Mabel’s Diner.

He turned around halfway through my complaint.

The change in his expression was so sudden that I stopped talking.

For a moment, he simply stared at me, his eyes moving over my face as though he was struggling to recognize someone he’d known for most of his life. The shirt in his hand slipped toward the floor, and the color drained from his cheeks.

“Skylar?”

I straightened, surprised by the uncertainty in his voice. “Yes, Walker. It’s me. I know I look terrible, but you don’t have to act quite so horrified.”

He didn’t smile.

Instead, he took a hesitant step toward me, then stopped as though he’d remembered something that made approaching me a terrible idea.

“Where the hell have you been?”

I frowned, wondering whether he was still half-asleep. “Downstairs, obviously. On that medieval torture device you insist on calling a couch.”

He shook his head, and I noticed for the first time how exhausted he looked. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and his usually neat bedroom was littered with clothes, coffee mugs, and papers.

“Skylar, I’m serious. Where have you been? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

His voice had risen enough to make me uncomfortable. Nate occasionally got irritated with me, particularly when I stole his food or deliberately changed the radio station, but I’d never heard him sound quite like this.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, abandoning my position in the doorway. “You brought me here last night!”

He stared at me with an expression that made my stomach tighten.

“I haven’t seen you since Saturday.”

I glanced toward the window, where sunlight was falling across the floor. For some reason, the ordinary brightness outside seemed completely at odds with the conversation we were having.

“Okay, well, considering Saturday was yesterday, I don’t understand why you’re acting like I’ve returned from a six-month expedition to Antarctica.”

Nate dragged a hand through his wet hair, looking genuinely distressed.

“Saturday wasn’t yesterday, Sky. Today is Tuesday. You’ve been missing for three fucking days.”

I waited for him to laugh.

Nathan had a talent for delivering ridiculous statements with a perfectly straight face, and I was reasonably certain this was another one of his attempts to make me look stupid.

Except he wasn’t laughing.

"That's not funny, Nate."

He was watching me with such desperate intensity that I suddenly became aware of how badly my hands were trembling.

"Do I look like I'm fucking joking?"

I tried to remember leaving Cole’s house again, concentrating on the fragments that had been floating through my mind since waking up. The pool lights, Harper’s laughter, Nate standing beside Owen. I could picture those things clearly enough, but there was nothing afterward that explained how I’d ended up on his couch.

“Nate, you’re scaring me,” I admitted.

His expression softened, although the fear didn’t leave his eyes. He looked toward his bedside table, where several papers had been scattered around his phone, and hurried over to retrieve one.

When he turned back, he was holding a printed flyer.

I recognized my graduation photograph before I noticed anything else. My mother had taken it in our backyard, and I’d complained about having to pose for approximately forty-seven pictures before she’d finally allowed me to change out of my dress.

Above the photograph, in enormous black letters, was the word MISSING.

I stared at it, struggling to understand why my face was printed beneath a heading I’d only ever associated with newspaper reports and crime documentaries.

Nathan held the paper out, explaining that my parents had contacted the police on Sunday morning, that search parties had been organized, and that Owen had barely slept since I’d disappeared.

The more he spoke, the less sense anything made.

My mother would be furious if I stayed out without calling, but she wouldn’t organize a search party over one night. Owen would probably threaten to murder Nate if he discovered I’d slept here, but that was hardly unusual.

Three days, though?

Three days was impossible.

I looked at the flyer again, reading the description of my clothes and the date I’d supposedly last been seen. Every detail matched what I remembered wearing to the party.

“Nate, I don’t understand,” I whispered, reaching toward the paper. “Let me see this.”

He loosened his grip as my fingers approached the bottom corner, clearly expecting me to take it.

I expected the same thing.

Instead, my hand moved straight through the page.

The sensation was so peculiar that I initially thought I’d misjudged the distance. There was no resistance against my fingertips, no familiar texture of paper brushing against my skin. My fingers simply continued forward while the flyer remained exactly where it was.

Nate’s hand opened in surprise, and the sheet slipped from his grasp, fluttering down between us before settling on the hardwood floor.

I stood staring at it, unable to reconcile what I’d just seen with anything I understood about the world.

Slowly, I raised my hand and examined it. My chipped pink nail polish was still there, along with the tiny scar near my thumb. Nothing about my fingers appeared unusual, and yet I’d just watched them pass through a solid object as though it hadn’t existed.

When I looked up, he had gone completely pale.

He was staring at my hand with the same horrified expression he’d worn when I first entered his bedroom, only now there was something else beneath it.

Recognition.

As though a terrible possibility had finally become impossible to ignore.

I wanted him to explain what was happening. I wanted him to tell me that I’d hit my head, that we were both imagining things, or that there was some perfectly reasonable explanation for the missing days and the paper lying at our feet.

But Nate looked just as frightened as I felt.

“Nate...?”

My voice sounded unfamiliar, barely more than a whisper, and I hated how desperately I needed him to answer.

He looked from the flyer to my face, his breathing uneven as he backed against the closet door.

For several seconds, neither of us seemed capable of moving.

Then he swallowed, his eyes never leaving mine.

“What the fuck?”