I don’t hear the words themselves so much as I feel the shift, like the room inhales and then exhales all at once.
Control booth engaged.
Zacharie doesn’t ask me what I want. He doesn’t need to. He positions me in a chair near the wall, not too close to the doors, not too far from the nurses’ station. Someone brings me water. Someone else brings me a blanket I don’t remember asking for.
And throughout it, his hand never leaves mine.
“Regarde-moi,” he murmurs softly, and I obey without thinking.
Look at me.
I focus on his eyes, on the familiar blue, on the way his thumb presses lightly against my knuckles in a steady rhythm—here, now, breathe.
The world slows.
Just enough.
“I should be with him,” I say suddenly, the guilt punching through the calm like a sucker blow. “Dane shouldn’t be alone.”
“He’s not,” Zacharie’s tone is matter-of-fact. “And neither are you—” He cups my cheek, and my breath catches. “So don’t break yourself apart when there’s no need.
“I just...I feel like this is my fault. I can’t stop thinking that if I just answered—”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Everybody around me keeps getting hurt,” I whisper. “Or dead.” Like Trina. “What if next time—”
I can’t even say it. All I can do is look at him, and he knows.
“You are not to be blamed for any of this, and nothing is going to happen to me.D’accord?”
He’s already pulling me close as I nod, and I rest my forehead against his shoulder, exhausted in a way that feels bone-deep.
The rollercoaster of my life keeps rattling forward, tracks screaming, alarms blaring. But for this one suspended moment, with his hand in mine and his presence anchoring me, I’m not screaming.
I’m breathing.
And I don’t know whether to be grateful for that...or terrified of how much I already need it.
Time stretches into something soft and cruel, people coming and going around us—doctors, nurses, someone pacing with a phone pressed to their ear—but Zacharie stays exactly where he is, like the axis the rest of the room spins around.
I shift in the chair, my side protesting with a dull, familiar ache, and even though I haven’t made a sound, he just knows, with the way he angles his body so I can lean into him without twisting, his arm coming around my shoulders in a way that shields more than it supports.
That’s how it’s been all night. He sees a need, and he repositions.
A nurse approaches, clipboard in hand. “Family?”
“Yes,” Zacharie says without missing a beat.
The nurse nods, makes a note, and it’s the doctor who comes out next to speak to us. I try my best to understand what he’s saying, but he might as well be speaking in another language. When he walks away, I glance at Zacharie uncertainly, and once again, he understands even me without saying a word.
“Dane’s going to make it,” he says simply.
It takes a few extra seconds for the words to sink in.
Dane will be...okay.
And the moment I realize this is the moment my body stops playing the martyr, the adrenaline rush fading, and exhaustion comes crashing in.
