Tethered - Stiles Stilinski

It had been fifteen days since Stiles Stilinski last saw Catherine.

Not that he was counting. Except he absolutely was. His bedroom wall calendar had a tiny red dot on the square that marked Lydia's party. Every morning he woke up and stared at it like it owed him answers.

But she didn't show up again.

Not at the grocery store. Not at the Beacon Hills movie theater. Not at the fireworks on New Years. Not even when he sat on the same bench outside the library for four hours with actual binoculars.

Nothing. No curls. No nose ring. No vanilla-tobacco perfume that he'd tried to recreate by sniffing candles in Target until a woman in a red vest asked him if he needed help. (He did. Mentally.)

She was gone.

And Stiles had spiraled.

At first, it was manageable. Scott laughed it off. Told him he needed to drink water and stop trying to Google "Catherine + Beacon Hills + Lydia's House Party + kiss magic???" like the internet would just give her back to him.

Then came the dream journal. The playlist. The half-finished short story he would never admit to writing. (It was bad. Like Nicholas Sparks but with ADHD and too many pop culture references.)

Scott kept teasing that he accidently ate magic mushrooms and made her up.

Now it was the first day back from winter break. And the worst part?

If she wasn't a student - if she'd just been in town for Christmas - she might already be gone. A mystery girl who wandered into his life like a fever dream, rewired his brain with a single kiss, and peaced out without so much as an Instagram handle.

She hadn't even taken a selfie at Lydia's party. He knew because he checked. All 143 tagged posts.

He was starting to question if she'd even been real.

But then he'd remember her eyes, and the weight of her hands on his neck, and the feeling of her lips on his.

Yeah. Real. Too real.

And now, he was haunted.