Page 52 of Collateral Love

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When I dropped her off that night, she paused before getting out of the car.

“Zay,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“You see me,” she said. “That matters.”

Then she closed the door and walked away.

I sat there longer than necessary, engine idling, chest tight with something I didn’t have language for yet.

I knew then that falling for Kenya wouldn’t be dramatic.

It was going to be structural.

And structures, once set, were hard as hell to dismantle.

The first timeKenya didn’t answer her phone, I felt it before I understood it.

It felt like a beat dropped out of a song I’d been listening to so long I didn’t realize it was keeping time for my heart.

She was never unreachable.

Even when she was busy, even when she needed space, she always sent something. A single word. A time stamp. An aim message. Kenya didn’t vanish. She believed disappearance was a luxury people like us couldn’t afford.

So when her phone rang without an answer ten times, I didn’t move right away.

I waited.

Thirty seconds.

Then sixty.

Then I stood.

The campus looked the same, too calm, too lit, too convinced it was safe. Students moved in clusters, laughing, touching, ignorant of how close they were to consequences they didn’t deserve.

I went to the location where she always studied, the engineering building on the third floor.

I took the stairs two at a time.

The lab was empty when I got there.

The lights were on, but everyone was gone. The chair pushed back too far, as if someone had stood quickly. Her notebook sat open on the table, pen rolling slowly like it hadn’t settled yet.

That’s when my chest tightened.

Kenya didn’t leave things unfinished.

I picked up the notebook without thinking.

Inside wasn’t math or code.

It was names.

Three unfamiliar ones. Written neatly. Circled once. Then crossed out.

Below them, in her precise handwriting:

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