I know with everything I am that he wouldn’t leave without telling me.  He wouldn’t leave me behind.

I drive like a psycho, running stop signs and ignoring the speed limit.  My mind is a one track train from hell and I’m forcing myself to stay positive.  We’re okay.  Jacoby is okay.  Everything is okay.  I’ve fought too hard to have this happiness in my life; I’m not about to let it be taken away without one last battle.

I hit the garage door opener as I round the corner of Jacoby’s street.  My blood roars in my ears as the door lifts painfully slow.  Just a crack inching open little by little.

He’s here.

He’s here.

He has to be here.

I jump the curb, cutting over the patch of browning grass between his house and the next, and blow out a gigantic breath when I see the dark blue bumper of his car peek out beneath the rising door.

Thank God.

Pulling in beside him, I cut the engine, hit the opener again, and race into the house.

“Jacoby?” I yell, my voice echoing throughout the open spaces.

Silence.

The room smells of Jacoby, the familiar sweet, woodsy scent and something else uniquely him.  It wraps around me like a shield, and my mind relinquishes its racing thoughts.  I charge through the empty living room and into the kitchen.  Empty.  Turning on my heel, I race down the hall to the spare bedroom and bathroom.  Both empty.

“Jacoby, where are you?” I shout, my voice shrill to my own ears.  The panic is rising, cresting, consuming my chest and my lungs and my heart.

When I hit the top of the stairs, I throw the bedroom door open with so much force it cracks against the wall.  I don’t have to step inside the room to know he isn’t here either.  The space is too still, too quiet, like the air itself hasn’t been disturbed since we both left for school this morning.

“Jacoby, where are you?” I whisper into the nothingness.  The room doesn’t answer me as I enter the space we shared as recently as this morning.  The bed we slept in, the shower we made love in, all of it is as quiet and as clueless as the inanimate objects they are.

Tears tickle my eyelids, and I can’t hold them back any longer.  They rush down my cheeks in a torrent of pain and fear.  I curl into a ball on my side in the center of the bed, and rest my cheek against the soft comforter.

Love is a strange thing.  Sometimes it finds you when you aren’t even looking.  Other times it requires you to fight with all the energy you have, and then some, to prove yourself worthy.  Regardless of how it came to be, when it’s gone, it treats us all the same.  It rips you wide open, leaving a gaping, unfillable hole in its absence.  Leaving you forever changed.

I don’t know how long I lie in this bed, watching the rays of sun sink across the wall until only dark shadows remain.  My only company is the thoughts swirling around my head.  Thoughts of love and loss, of mistakes and pain.

Desperation.

The room grows dark and shadows crawl like living beings across the wall.  My tears eventually dry.  My eyelids droop, and I feel like sleep could take me away.  But a loud knock coming from down stairs has me suddenly wide awake.  I bolt from the room and take the stairs two at a time, rushing towards the sound.  When I hit the living room, the loud knocking sounds from the door, and I fling it open without checking the peephole.

“Trey,” I cry out before lunging at the big man wearing a mask of confusion in the doorway.  I wrap my arms around his thick neck and burrow my face in his wide chest as a torrent of tears stream from my eyes.  Trey lifts my body with him as he walks inside the house, shutting the door and leading me to the couch.  All the while I cry.

“Shh, honey.  What’s going on?  Where’s Jacoby?” he asks.  Something about his tone, about the careful way he delivers the question has my tears immediately calming, and I look up at his concerned blue gaze.

“I don’t know.  He’s gone, and I think…I think he had to leave.  Someone found out about us.”

Simultaneously, Trey’s body locks tight, and he closes his eyes.  When he opens them again, his face is carefully blank.

“What makes you say that?”

I sit with Trey while he holds my hand, and I fill him in on the events of the past day.  The more I talk, the more agitated he becomes until he jumps up from the couch and begins pacing the room.  His behavior is frightening, and it gives me a deep feeling of dread in my gut.

“Trey,” I begin cautiously.  “What aren’t you telling me?”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?” he asks, and I don’t even have to think about it.  Our routine has been the same ever since I started staying at his house.  We don’t text back and forth all day because Jacoby has been adamant that I pay attention in class.  I see him in the morning, then we both leave for school in our own cars.  We text a bit during second period, because he knows I have study hall.  Most days we’d meet up for lunch in his classroom.  Just thinking about what happened today has a wave of bile rising in my throat.  We were so damn stupid.

“I saw him during lunch.  Someone found out about us and threatened to tell the principal.  I thought we had it handled.  Jacoby told me he’d see me during sixth period.  It’s his calculus class.  After that, we usually leave in our separate cars and come home, but today, he wasn’t in class.  He hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts.”

Trey looks away from where I’m seated and stares silently at the wall.  The anxiety building inside of me is becoming harder to contain with each second that passes.  This is all my fault.

“He sent me a text around 1:30 today.”

Instantly, I’m on high alert.  “Tell me what he said, Trey.” Dread creeps stealthily through my veins as Trey kneels before me and grabs my clammy hands from my lap.

“I’m not sure what he meant.  It was short, and he didn’t respond when I questioned him further.”

“Tell me,” I whisper.  My voice sounds small and fragile.  A true reflection to how I feel right now.

“He said, ‘I’ll be back, but I have to leave.”

Icy water swims through my veins.  I cup my hands over my mouth to hold in a sob as my body shudders.  This can’t be happening.  We were so close.  So close to being free to live our lives without repercussions, and one mistake is all it takes.  He left me.

“How could he leave me?” I cry.

“Honey, we don’t know that.  We don’t know where he went.  Maybe he just needed to clear his head,” Trey soothes while rubbing circles on the backs of my hands.  But I won’t hear any of it.  His words aren’t penetrating the fog of despair clouding my mind.  He left me.  He left me.  It’s all I can think.  It shrouds me in my own personal hell.

The world around me tilts and swirls as I feel the loss of control I’ve battled my entire life returning.  The feelings I worked so hard to silence bubble up to the surface, proving to me I hadn’t really overcome them.  They were never gone.  They were only biding their time.  Knowing I was still weak, and waiting for me to break.

I’m broken, and I’m desperate for relief.

I feel crazed and powerless.  In a move that shocks us both, I tear my hands out of Trey’s grasp and leap over the back of the couch with one destination in mind: the kitchen.  If I can get a knife, I can regain some control.

I’m frantic and needy, and my palms are slick as I yank open drawers to find something sharp.  Where does he keep all his knives?

“Honey, what are you doing?”  Trey’s voice sounds from behind me, quiet and cautious.

I’m out of time.  I’m out of time. I’m out of time.

The last drawer I yank open holds my prize.  I grab the first knife I see, a small fillet knife, and without pause I skate the sharp edge up my forearm.  Blood immediately bubbles to the surface where my flesh tears, and I let out a harsh cry.  Instead of the heady rush I’m accustomed to, all I feel is pain.  And shame.  I drop the knife in shock and lock eyes with Trey.  A mask of sheer horror is frozen on his face.