Jeffery had walked Melody through these woods for three days, and he knew every tree was a lie. He led her in circles on purpose. He said the path was hidden, that danger waited beyond the trees, that only he could get them out. He told her these things because he loved her. He needed her to believe she had no one but him. That was the whole point. Keep her lost, keep her close, and she stays his. Now she stood at the treeline with her small backpack on her shoulders, and two girls glowed in the dark ahead of her. He did not move. He could not. The glowing girls stood where the trees thinned. Their skin gave off a pale light, soft and steady, like the inside of a shell. One of them lifted a hand. The brush behind her pulled back on its own and showed a clear trail out. A real one. Jeffery had spent three days swearing no such trail existed. "Melody," he said. His voice stayed warm. It always did. "Don't go near those things. We don't know what they are." She looked back at him. Her big eyes were calm. That scared him more than the light. "They're showing me the way," she said. "They could be anything." He stepped toward her, slow, hands open. "Stay with me. I'll get us home. I always do." Her bare feet pressed into the cold dirt. She did not move toward him. She did not move toward them yet either. She just watched his face, the way she used to read a room full of strangers. "You said there was no path," she said. Short. Flat. "There's a path." He had no cover story ready for this. He had one ready for every look she had ever given him. Not this one. His mind raced through the girls, the light, the trail, and found nothing he could name, nothing he could turn into a threat she would believe. That was when his white cat walked out of the dark. It crossed between them, calm, its fur catching the girls' glow. It stopped at Melody's feet and pressed against her ankle. Then it looked back at Jeffery with flat green eyes and did not come to him. "Come here," Jeffery said to the cat. His voice cracked on the second word. The cat stayed with her. Melody crouched and touched its head. She stood. She stepped onto the trail, between the two glowing girls, and the light closed around her like water. "Melody." He reached the treeline and stopped. Something at that line held him back. He could not name it, so he could not break it. "You'll come back. You always come back." She did not turn around. The trail took her, and the girls, and his cat, and the light went out. The woods went black. Jeffery stood alone at the edge of them, and for the first time, he did not know the way.

The trail spit Melody out at the forest's edge by morning. The two glowing girls faded with the dawn. His white cat trotted ahead, tail up, sure of the way. Melody followed it to a parked camper. Cameras ringed the small vehicle, mounted at every corner, their lenses turned outward like watching eyes. She stopped in the dirt. She knew this setup. Jeffery had built one just like it. The camper door hung open. Inside, a phone buzzed on a narrow shelf. One message waited. She picked it up. The screen showed his name. Her chest went tight. "I'm sorry," the message read. "I lied about the woods. I was scared of losing you. Come back. I'll make it right. I love you. There's no one out there for you but me." She read it twice. Every line was a hook she had swallowed before. The apology was a door he wanted her to walk through. She set the phone down on the shelf. She thought of her cousin, who had stopped calling months ago. She thought of the Thursday coffee friend who had vanished without a word. She thought of her journal, buried in a drawer, and the dancing she no longer did. Jeffery had cleared the room around her until only he was left. He had always said she had no one. Standing here, alone, she almost believed it was true. Her hand went to the wooden ring on her finger. He had carved it himself and called it proof. Proof he loved her. She had kept it through three days of circles and lies. She twisted it now. The warm grain caught the morning light. The cat pressed against her bare ankle. It did not go back toward the woods. It stayed with her, facing forward, the way it had refused to go to him. "He wants me to think I have no one," Melody said. The cat blinked up at her. "So I only have him." She pulled the ring off. It fit her hand so well that her finger looked wrong without it. She held it over the shelf, next to the glowing phone, and let it drop. It rolled once and stopped against the screen. She did not send a reply. She did not go back. She stepped down from the camper into the dirt. The cameras tracked her as she walked, their lenses turning. Somewhere, she knew, Jeffery was watching the feed, waiting to see which way she went. Melody turned away from the woods. She chose the open road instead, the cat trotting at her heel. Behind her, the phone kept glowing, his words unread, the ring beside them untouched. She had no one left. She had believed that for months. Now she understood he had made it so. And she kept walking anyway.

Jeffery watched the screens inside the camper. The cameras showed Melody on the open road, shrinking with every step. His white cat trotted at her heel, loyal to her now, not him. He grabbed the phone from the shelf. The wooden ring sat against the glass where she had dropped it. He picked it up and closed his fist around it. The ring was his last hook. He had carved it to fit only her finger. He had told her it was proof of love. As long as she wore it, she carried a piece of him. But she had left it behind. Without it, he had nothing to pull her back with. Jeffery ran out of the camper. The dirt was cold under the morning light. He caught up to her at the edge of the trees, where two glowing girls stood in the half-light. Their pale shapes flickered. They had shown her the path out. They watched him now and did not move aside. "Melody," he called. She stopped but did not turn. "You forgot this." He held the ring up. She looked at it over her shoulder. "No," she said. "I left it." He stepped closer. "I love you. No one else can ever love you like I do. No one else will ever have you. You belong to me." His voice shook. He meant every word, and that scared him. "You hear me? No one can have you. Ever." Melody turned around. Her big eyes were wet, but steady. Her hand drifted to the spot where the ring used to sit. The finger looked bare and wrong. Her chest ached like something had been cut out of her. "That's why I'm leaving," she said. He froze. The glowing girls brightened behind her. The cat sat at her feet and stared at him with green eyes. "You said no one can have me," Melody went on. Her voice stayed low. "Not even me." She held out her hand. "Give it to me." Jeffery wanted to run. Instead he set the ring in her small palm. His fingers brushed hers. He felt the old pull and leaned into it. Melody closed her hand. Then she drew back her arm and threw the ring into the deep dark woods. It spun once and vanished among the trees. "Now you have nothing of mine," she said. Jeffery stared at the dark gap in the trees. The ring was gone where he could not reach it. His last hold on her was gone with it. Melody turned to the road. The cat rose and followed. The glowing girls faded into the daylight. She walked away, barefoot in the cold dirt, and did not look back. Jeffery stood alone at the treeline. His hands were empty. He had lost the thing that bound her to him, and he had no plan for what came next.

Jeffery walked back to the camper and shut the door. He told himself he did not care. He pulled out his phone and blocked Melody on everything. Her number. Her messages. Every way she could reach him. If she tried to come back, she would find a locked door. Let her think he had moved on. Let her think he felt nothing. He felt everything. That night he dreamed of her laughing with a stranger. In the dream a man touched her hand, and she did not pull away. Jeffery woke with his jaw tight and his fists sore. He grabbed his phone to check her last seen. The block had cut him off from that too. He had locked himself out of his own window. He sat among the broken panels and torn framing of the wrecked camper. Vines had crept through a gap in the wall and spread across the floor. He stared at the leaves and pictured where she might be. Who she sat beside now. Whether she slept soundly without him. The not knowing dug into him worse than losing her had. He decided to drown it. He drove into town and found a girl at a bar. He bought her drinks and told her stories. He said his ex had twisted him up for months. He said she lied to him, controlled him, made him crazy. The girl listened and touched his arm. He waited to feel the old pull. Nothing came. He tried again the next week. A different girl, the same stories. He watched her mouth move and thought about how Melody tilted her head when she listened. He had memorized forty-seven of Melody's expressions. This girl had one he did not care to learn. He left before she finished her drink. By the third girl he stopped pretending. She laughed at something he said, and the sound was wrong. It was not Melody's laugh, the one that had once made him forget to breathe. He stood up mid-sentence and walked out into the cold. Back at the camper he looked at his phone. His thumb hovered over Melody's blocked name. He wanted to unblock her. He wanted to see one dot, one word, any sign of where she was. But unblocking her meant she could see him too. She would know he had come crawling back. She would know he cared, and knowing it would hand her the only power he had left. So he did not. He set the phone face down on the junk pile and pressed his palms against his eyes. He had cut himself off to look strong. Now the wall he built kept him blind. He could not replace her. He could not reach her. He did not even know the name of the town she had walked to. For the first time, Jeffery had no model, no route, and no way to find her at all.

The camper stayed quiet for weeks. Jeffery stopped counting days. He ate little and slept less. He played scenes in his head where Melody came to the door. In every one, he kept it locked. He pictured her knocking, crying, begging to come in. He pictured himself not moving. He wanted her to feel the pain he felt. In his story she was the bad guy, and bad guys stayed outside in the cold. But the knock never came. Only the scenes came, over and over, until he could not tell them from real memory. Miles away, Melody sat on the floor of a small room that was hers alone. The backpack lay open beside her. She pulled out the gum he liked, the charger he borrowed, the bandaids she kept for him. One by one she set them on the floor. Her hands shook. Each thing she lifted felt like a thread she was cutting. It hurt worse than she expected. Her chest ached. Part of her still wanted to drive to the woods. Part of her still wanted to knock on his door. Then two girls were there. They stood in the doorway with soft light around them. She had seen them before, in the trees, when they showed her the path out. They did not speak. One shook her head slowly. The other pointed back to the open journal on the floor. Melody looked at the journal. She had not written in months. She picked up the pen. 'I am still in there,' she read from an old page. Her own handwriting. She turned to a blank page and wrote something new. She wrote that she was not going back. The white cat jumped onto her lap. It pressed its head against her hand, calm and warm. It had followed her out of the woods and never looked back. She stroked its fur and felt her breathing slow. She stood. She gathered the gum, the charger, the bandaids, and dropped them in the trash. The backpack felt lighter. She pulled on music and moved her bare feet across the floor, the way she used to dance alone before him. The two girls watched her dance. They smiled. Then the light around them dimmed. They faded until the doorway was empty. She did not need them anymore. Melody danced until she was tired. The cat watched from the windowsill. For the first time in months, she did not ache for Jeffery. She did not wonder what he felt. She let the thought of him pass through her and leave. She sat down and wrote one last line. She was free. Not someday. Now. In the woods, Jeffery kept his door locked against a knock that was never coming. He waited for a woman who had already stopped waiting for him.