The Tuesday morning routine had become a game of shadows. Layla sat behind her curtain again, watching the driveway. This time, Jade didn't wait. He didn't idle the engine for fifteen minutes or honk. He pulled out as soon as he got into the car, his taillights disappearing around the corner without a backward glance.
The sting was sharper than Layla expected. She took the bus to school, staring out the window at the grey Montreal suburbs, making a silent pact with herself: No more boy drama. She needed to debug her life. She needed to focus on the code, the coffee, and the flight to Thailand. But every time her phone buzzed with a generic news alert or a weather update, her heart performed a traitorous skip, hoping it was him.
At lunch, the atmosphere felt lighter. She found Sarah sitting with Liam, the tension from the "driveway brawl" having settled into a weary truce. Layla sat down, greeting Liam cordially. He returned the energy with a polite, measured nod, the "Golden Boy" was back, even if he was still wearing the fading bruises of Jade's anger.
"I'm already at four hundred in the savings account," Layla told Sarah, trying to steer the conversation toward something productive. "If I keep these double shifts up, I'll have the plane ticket booked by next month."
"You deserve a break before that, though," Sarah said, nudging Liam. "His birthday is in two days. He's turning twenty-one and he's refusing to acknowledge it."
Liam leaned back, his expression guarded. "I don't like overcrowded places, Sarah. You know this. A party is just a room full of noise I don't want to hear."
"It doesn't have to be a club," Layla suggested, her creative mind already spinning. "What about a house party? Just close friends. Max fifteen people. We can organize it for you, if you'd like."
Liam looked at Layla, searching her face for a moment before he gave a small, reluctant shrug. "Not more than fifteen. Could be less," he said. He stood up to head to class, but his eyes lingered on her for a second longer than necessary. It was a small opening, a chance for Liam to reclaim some of the territory Jade had scorched.
Layla spent the evening in a state of forced normalcy. She ate dinner with her mother, discussing the mundane details of the Quebec weather and school assignments. But the moment she retreated to her room, the silence became a vacuum.
Then, her phone buzzed.
It was Jade. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she grabbed the device. The message had been sent three minutes ago. She stared at the notification bar, her thumb hovering over the screen. If she replied instantly, she was the "puppet" he called her. If she waited too long, he might vanish again.
Jade: Look out your window by 7:00.
It was 6:58.
Layla scrambled to the glass, peeking toward the house next door. His bedroom windows were dark. The streetlights were flickering on, casting long, orange shadows across the lawns. She sat back on her bed, her pulse racing, counting the seconds until the digital clock flipped.
7:00.
She threw the window open eagerly, the cool night air rushing into the room. The lights in his room were still off. She felt a surge of disappointment, until a voice hissed from directly below her.
"Move out of the way. I'm coming up."
Layla's jaw dropped as she saw the dark silhouette of Jade scale the trellis with a fluid, practiced ease. He swung his legs over the sill and dropped into her room, looking as if he'd just walked through a front door instead of climbing a wall.
"You have a lot of nerve coming up my window like that," Layla said, trying to keep her voice stern even as her breath hitched.
Jade didn't look intimidated. He sat on the edge of her bed, casually rearranging the pillows she had displaced in her hurry to reach the window. "But you opened it, though," he pointed out, a ghost of a smirk playing on his lips.
"What do you want? You can't be here right now," Layla whispered, glancing nervously at her bedroom door. Her mother was just down the hall, and the "independence" she'd been praised for would vanish in a heartbeat if Jade was caught here.
"Then we'd better keep our voices down," Jade said. He reached out, his hands finding her waist and pulling her forward until she was standing in the narrow space between his legs.
The anger she'd been nursing all day, the "just chilling" comment, the insults to Sarah, started to melt under the heat of his gaze. She was back in the loop, the variable she couldn't delete, standing in the dark with the one person who knew exactly how to crash her system.
The heat radiating from him was a physical force, pulling her closer despite every logical "no" screaming in her head. Layla looked down at him, her hands resting tentatively on his shoulders to keep some semblance of distance.
"You don't get to do this, Jade," she whispered, her voice trembling. "You don't get to act like I'm a stranger at school and then climb through my window like we're in some movie. I'm not a light switch you can just flip on when you're bored."
Jade didn't pull away. Instead, he leaned his forehead against her stomach, a gesture of surrender that caught her completely off guard. "I'm not bored, Layla. I'm frustrated. I see you talking to Liam, planning his little birthday bash, and I feel like I'm being coded out of the picture."
"You coded yourself out with that comment at lunch!" Layla hissed, her fingers involuntarily curling into the fabric of his shirt. "You chose 'chilling' over 'us.' Why are you even here?"
Jade looked up, his eyes dark and searching in the dim light of her room. "Because 'chilling' was a lie I told to keep people out of my head. Being here? This is the only thing that feels real. I saw you at the bus stop this morning and I almost turned the car around. I hated that you weren't in the seat next to me."
He pulled her an inch closer, his breath warm against her skin. "I heard about the party. Fifteen people, right? Liam's big night. You really going to spend his twenty-first birthday playing hostess while I'm sitting next door in the dark?"
"It's his birthday, Jade. He's been through enough," Layla said, though her resolve was softening with every word.
"I don't care about his birthday. I care about the fact that you're looking at him the way you used to look at me." Jade stood up slowly, never breaking eye contact, until he was towering over her. The space in the room felt like it was shrinking, the air thick with the scent of rain and leather.
He reached out, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw with agonizing slowness. "Don't go to that party for him, Layla. Stay here. With me."
Layla looked at the door, then back at him. She was caught in a feedback loop, a circular logic that always led back to the same person. She knew that if she stayed, she was proving him right; she was the puppet. But as he leaned in, his lips just a fraction of an inch from hers, she realized that some bugs in the system were too powerful to be patched.
"You're an asshole," she breathed, the insult lost in the kiss as she finally gave in.
Outside, the Montreal wind rattled the windowpane, but inside, the only sound was the frantic heartbeat of a girl who knew she was playing with fire, and the boy who was more than happy to let the whole system burn.