Somewhere Only We Know - 11. Into the Night

Kitt eased the bedroom window open with trembling hands, the cold night air spilling in like something from another world. The gust hit his face sharply, shocking him out of the numb, stunned panic that had taken root in his chest. He lifted his backpack through the opening, the strap catching briefly on the frame before sliding free. Then he swung his leg over the sill and dropped onto the narrow strip of frozen earth behind the house.

The moment his feet hit the ground, a jolt of cold shot up his legs. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t—not with the echo of his father’s voice still pulsing through the walls, not with the shattered remains of his phone glittering on the porch, not with the image of Stephen Wellington’s face carved into his memory like a flame-brand he would never fully scrub away.

He slid the window shut behind him without letting himself glance toward the front of the house. He didn’t need to see the streetlamp to know Matt was still standing there, breath fogging in the cold, shoulders drawn tight, eyes wide with worry. Kitt could picture him too clearly—caught between wanting to run after him and being terrified of crossing the invisible boundary Stephen had laid down with shaking fury.

The thought alone nearly collapsed Kitt’s knees.

He gripped the backpack straps until his knuckles hurt and bolted across the yard. Frost crackled beneath his shoes, the grass stiff with winter. He slipped through the narrow gap in the chain-link fence—the one he and Matt had squeezed through for years to retrieve footballs or sneakers that sailed too far during summer.

The memory punched him in the chest:
Matt laughing breathlessly.
Kitt pretending not to.

The ache curled deeper.

He didn’t dare go toward the street. If he saw Matt—if Matt saw him—his resolve would dissolve instantly. He couldn’t give his father another reason to direct his anger at Matt. He couldn’t drag the Everests into this—it was the only place in the world he felt safe.

Loving Matt, even silently, meant protecting him.
Even now.
Especially now.

So he kept to the shadows.

He moved behind hedges, between narrow side yards, down routes only kids or people running from something ever truly learned. His breath came out in white bursts, too fast, too shallow. His shoes crunched through thin crusts of old snow, leaves breaking underfoot. His heart beat painfully—not just from running, but from the crushing truth that every step carried him farther from everything he’d known since he was twelve.

The street where he’d learned to breathe.
The bedroom where he’d once believed love and obedience were the same thing.
The boy across the road who’d become the closest thing to home he’d ever had.

When he reached Oak Hollow Drive—two blocks over, mostly asleep at this hour—he slowed just enough to inhale. The winter air stabbed at his lungs. His eyes burned from cold and tears he refused to let freeze on his face.

He walked until he reached the small bus shelter near town center, its plexiglass walls glowing weakly under a flickering streetlamp. Inside, he sank onto the hard plastic bench, curling forward, backpack clutched to his chest like a shield.

Only then—only when he was far enough from Willow Creek Drive that the silhouette under the streetlamp was gone—did the weight drop fully onto him.

He pressed his forehead to the edge of his backpack and let the tears fall, hot against his frozen cheeks.

Lakehurst had not raised him. He hadn’t lived there his whole life. But the years he’d spent in that town had stitched themselves through him so thoroughly that losing it felt like something breaking inside his ribs. He had learned to speak louder there. To laugh without bracing. To trust that friendship could feel steady. To believe someone—Matt—could understand him.

Lakehurst had given him a home, even when his house did not.

Tonight, that home had been ripped away.

Headlights appeared on the road. The bus arrived with a groan, lights cutting through the falling snow. Kitt stood on unsteady legs, tugged his hood low, and stepped aboard. He dropped the last of his crumpled bills into the fare box and took a seat near the back.

The doors clattered shut behind him, sealing him off from the life he’d just fled.

He pressed his forehead to the window as the bus pulled away, watching the familiar outlines blur: the shuttered shops, the glowing streetlamps, the glint of the frozen lake that held every memory of Matt he treasured too fiercely to name.

He watched Lakehurst shrink until it dissolved into the swirling snow.

Only then did he whisper, barely audible even to himself:

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t know who he meant it for.
His mother.
Matt.
Or the younger version of himself he’d just abandoned in the dark.

The bus carried him into the unknown.

By the time the last streetlamp vanished, Kitt knew—truly knew—that the life he’d had until tonight was gone.

. . .

Inside the Wellington house, silence spread like smoke.

A silence so sharp that even the ticking hallway clock felt too loud.

Stephen Wellington stood near the front door, jaw clenched so tightly a muscle twitched along his temple. His hands were fists at his sides, trembling with whatever storm of anger and fear still twisted under his skin. He exhaled once—a long, controlled breath—but it did nothing to untie the knot in his chest.

He locked the deadbolt with a click that echoed through the house.

Behind him, Susan stood on the stairs, one hand pressed to her mouth, the other gripping the railing as if the steps had become unsteady. Tears gathered in her eyes but didn’t fall; her whole body shook from the effort of holding herself steady.

She had heard everything.
Every word.
Every crack in her son’s voice.

“Stephen…” she whispered. “He’s not in his room. He must have left through the window. Where… where did he go?”

Stephen didn’t look at her. He walked into the living room with stiff, deliberate steps—a man convincing himself he was right because the alternative was too terrifying to consider. He bent down, collected the shattered pieces of Kitt’s phone, and placed them on the coffee table.

“He’ll be back,” Stephen said finally, voice flat, carved from manufactured certainty. “He won’t last out there long. He’ll come home once he regains his senses.”

Susan descended the stairs slowly, arms hugging herself. “Stephen, he left with nothing but a backpack. He’s seventeen. He’s just a boy.”

“He made a choice,” Stephen replied, turning to face her. His expression was stern—hard, but flickering with something else underneath: fear. “He defied this family. He defied everything we stand for. Sometimes boys need to be broken before they understand the path they’ve stepped off of.”

Susan flinched.

“He’s our son,” she whispered. “He’s our child.”

“And I love him,” Stephen insisted, though the words sounded like they scraped his throat on the way out. “But love doesn’t mean accepting… that. This phase. This confusion. He’ll come back when he remembers who he’s meant to be.”

Susan shook her head, tears finally slipping free. “He wasn’t confused. He was hurting. And you—”

“Enough,” Stephen cut in, sharp but wavering. He stared out the dark window instead of at her, as if searching for an outline he already feared he’d never see again. “He’ll come home when he’s ready to apologize.”

Susan’s voice cracked. “He might not come home at all.”

Stephen stiffened.

For a flicker of a moment—just one—something in his expression collapsed. Fear. Regret. Maybe even a whisper of guilt.

But he swallowed it down.

“He will,” he murmured.

But it sounded less like certainty and more like prayer.

Susan moved to the coffee table, her fingers brushing the broken phone screen. The last remnants of a message flickered and died.

She closed her eyes.

“I’m going to look for him,” she whispered.

“You will not chase him through the night,” Stephen snapped. “He needs space. He needs time.”

“He needs his mother,” she said, voice trembling but anchored. “And he needs you. Not like this. Not angry. Not punishing.”

She stopped, breath stuttering.

Stephen’s posture softened by one degree. But he shook his head again.

“We wait,” he said.

Susan looked at him—really looked—and saw not a rock of faith or authority or fatherhood, but a man terrified of having a son he did not understand.

She did not trust herself to speak. Instead she walked quietly to the kitchen, sat at the table, folded her hands, and whispered a prayer that sounded more like a plea.

Stephen stayed in the living room long after she left, staring through the window toward the street Matt had stood on earlier. He wondered, for one awful second, whether the boy was still there—or whether he had run the moment Kitt disappeared.

A tremor of guilt stirred in him.

He smothered it immediately.

“He’ll come back,” he whispered again.

Outside, snow fell steadily, burying the fading footprints of a boy who no longer belonged in this house.

. . .

Matt stayed under the streetlamp long after Kitt vanished through the front door. He stood motionless, breath turning to fog, the cold climbing up his sleeves and under his collar.

He replayed the scene over and over: Stephen’s voice, Kitt’s panic, the look on his face when he had run into Matt’s arms. Every time Matt blinked, the memory returned sharper.

He waited for the door to open.

He waited for a window to twitch.

He waited for anything.

Nothing.

The porch light stayed on for several long minutes, bright against the dark yard. Matt stared at it with desperate hope, telling himself Kitt was still inside—still arguing, still crying, still somewhere he could reach if he tried hard enough.

Then, without warning, the porch light clicked off.

The faint sound felt like a blow.

Matt’s pulse spiked. He stepped closer to the curb, then stopped, panic rising. Something was wrong. Wrong in a way that made his body feel weightless and heavy all at once.

Finally, unable to stand it another second, he crossed the street.

He moved quietly along the side of the Wellington house, shoes sinking slightly in the snow. His breath came sharp and unsteady. He didn’t know what he expected to find—maybe Kitt in the shadows, maybe a cracked window, maybe nothing at all.

He slipped through the side gate into the backyard.

At first, everything looked normal.

Then he saw it:
The snow beneath Kitt’s window, crushed and uneven.
A footprint.
Another.
A scuffed patch of frozen dirt.

Matt crouched and touched the disturbed ground, fingers trembling.

Kitt had left.
Climbed out the window.
Run.

Matt lurched to his feet and followed the trail through the old gap in the fence—the shortcut they’d used since they were kids.

“Please,” he whispered under his breath. “Please still be close.”

He checked the lake. Empty.

The benches near town square. Nothing.

Behind the convenience store. Silent.

The library steps. Deserted.

He jogged down Main Street, chest burning, scanning every doorway, every bus stop, every alley where someone might sit and try not to fall apart.

He reached the bus shelter last.

The streetlamp flickered overhead, the shelter cast in a dim, wavering glow. For one breathless second he imagined Kitt curled on the bench, knees up, head bowed.

But the shelter was empty.

Only the faintest indentation in the snow nearby suggested someone had recently been there.

Matt’s legs gave out. He dropped onto the bench, elbows bracing on his knees, fingers tangling in his hair.

His breath came too fast.

He felt like he couldn’t get enough air.

“I should’ve stayed,” he whispered. “I should’ve made him stay. I should’ve—”

A sob caught in his throat.

He pressed his palms over his eyes.

“Please be okay.”

The snow fell.
The streetlamps hummed.
The town slept.

Matt stayed there until frost gathered on his sleeves. Until he couldn’t feel his fingers. Until worry carved him hollow.

One single promise formed in him, fierce and unwavering:

He was not going to stop looking.
Not tonight.
Not tomorrow.
Not ever.

Losing Kitt wouldn’t just feel like losing a friend.

It felt like losing a part of himself he didn’t fully understand until this moment.

. . .

The bus drifted off the highway and slowed toward a small town.

Kitt lifted his head enough to see the sign through the frosted window:

RIVERBEND — Population 14,900.

He blinked.

He’d been here once—for a swim meet. Bright day. Teammates chattering. Gatorade bottles clattering. Matt nudging him, grinning, saying he swam like a beast.

That felt like another lifetime.
A warmer one.
A safer one.

The bus hissed to a stop. Kitt stood, legs unsteady, and stepped out into a blast of winter wind that nearly knocked the breath from him.

The door shut behind him.
The taillights faded.

The silence swallowed him.

Snow spiraled down in soft sheets, sticking to his hair. Riverbend’s streets were half-asleep—old lamps flickering, shops shuttered, the neon sign of a diner buzzing tiredly.

He walked because stopping meant freezing.

He passed the frozen fountain from summer tournaments. He passed dark storefronts. His toes went numb first, then his fingers, then something in his chest that felt more dangerous than cold.

He wandered toward the Riveredge Apartments—run-down, tired-looking, haloed in the weak glow of a streetlamp. Laundry hung stiff with ice on a balcony. A shadow crossed a curtain.

He wasn’t ready to approach anyone.

He wasn’t ready to be seen.

He found a narrow overhang between a laundromat and an auto shop, a small sliver of concrete untouched by snow. He sat on a milk crate, pulled his knees to his chest, and hugged his backpack as tightly as he could.

His breath fogged the air in trembling bursts.

His hands hurt.
His face burned.
Hunger twisted sharply in his stomach.

The minutes stretched until they blurred. The shaking grew worse, then weaker, then worse again. Tears froze before they could fall fully.

A single car passed. The driver didn’t look his way.

The cold settled into him like something alive.

By the time dawn crept across the sky in thin bands of gray, Kitt had stopped shaking—not because he was warm, but because his body was too exhausted to do anything else.

Riverbend slowly woke around him—car engines starting, trash bins rattling, dogs barking in the distance—but Kitt remained curled in that small patch of shelter, half-conscious, half-frozen, wholly alone.

He had been here before.
But never like this.

Not freezing.
Not lost.
Not seventeen and out of places to go.

This was only the beginning.