I look down at the small camera in my hand. It feels heavier than it should, like it holds not just video, but the shredded pieces of Lucas’s soul—my pulse pounds against my ribcage. My grip tightens around it.
“I’m sorry I have to give you this burden,” she says softly, her arms wrapping tightly around herself, like she’s bracing for something to shatter.
“It’s not a burden…” I murmur, lifting my head slowly. “Not if I get to fuck someone up.”
I straighten, standing tall, every inch of me laced with purpose now. Kathryn watches me through red, glassy eyes.
“I’m never leaving your son, Kathryn,” I say, steady and sure, like a vow written in blood. “He’s stuck with me. For life. And soon… he’s getting my last name.”
She gasps softly—barely audible, but I hear it.
Then I turn, walking toward my car, the camera in hand like a loaded weapon. The weight of it anchors me.
***
I sit rigid in my chair, alone in my home office, the faint hum of the overhead light the only sound in the room. My eyes are fixed on the small pink camera resting on the desk in front of me. I haven’t looked away from it since I set it down. Part of me is afraid that if I do—even for a second—it’ll vanish, like it was never there. And maybe that would be easier. Maybe disappearing would be kinder than what it holds inside.
Earlier today, Kathryn placed it in my hand as if it weighed the world. And maybe it does. It holds pieces of him, of Lucas. The softest, happiest parts… and the ones that were shattered and never put back together. Somewhere in this device is the night that destroyed him, the night that turned silence into safety and people into shadows. I don’t know how I’ll handle watching it. I don’t know how I’ll handle knowing.
Because this isn’t just anyone, this is him. The boy I’ve come to cherish in ways I never thought I could. The one whose absence suffocates me, whose voice lives in my mind even when he isn’t speaking. I adore every part of him. Even the broken ones. Maybe especially the broken ones.
After leaving his mother’s place, I picked him up from his driving lessons. He was smiling, that shy, beautiful smile that only seems to appear when he forgets how much of the world he’s learned to fear. He talked the whole way home, telling me about the instructor who’s finally patient with him, how he’slearning to take control behind the wheel. Every word was laced with quiet pride, and I sat there gripping the steering wheel, feeling something bloom in my chest. I’d kill for that smile. For him to keep smiling like that forever.
When we got home, he asked me to make the butter chicken again—the one I cooked the other night. He begged with that look that always makes my knees weak, and of course, I said yes. While we ate, he told me the car model I’d gotten him was too much for a college student. I almost laughed. If only he knew how restrained I’d been to get him something more than that. The only reason I got that specific car was because, weeks ago, long before we were even together, I saw it on his phone’s lock screen. I asked, and he’d mumbled something about Audi being his dream brand. That was all I needed to know.
After dinner, we showered together. I couldn’t stop touching him, my hands and lips memorizing every inch of him, as I leave Promises, Pleas, love, and adoration in every touch. Letting him know that I can’t breathe right without him. That I’m staying. That nothing, nothing, can make me leave.
Later, in bed, when we were both worn out and tangled beneath the sheets, he pressed a sleepy kiss to my jaw and whispered, “Goodnight, Alex.”
And now…
Now I’m here, sitting alone, and I can still feel the ghost of that kiss like a bruise.
I look down at the camera again. My fingers twitch. I’m afraid of what I’ll see, of how it might gut me. But more than that… I’m scared of how long he’s carried it alone. And I know, with cold, unwavering clarity, that if what’s on that tape is what I think it is… then someone out there needs to pay.
I take out the memory card from the camera, my fingers steady despite the heaviness in my chest. Sliding it into the side of my laptop, I click through the folders until I’m in. Dozensof image files pop up first, then a collection of videos—maybe twenty or more in total. Most of them are short, some just a few minutes long, and they are all labeled with Random names. “Cooking Disaster.” “Skate Fail.” “Makeup Tutorial,” “Tyler learning how to twerk,” And then, the last one, tucked at the very end, stands out.
It has no name.
Just a date.
And I know.
It’s that night. The night, everything went silent in Lucas’s world. The night his voice—his laughter, his light was taken from him.
I don’t click on it.
Not yet.
Instead, I go back to the beginning. To the first video. If I’m going to do this, I want to see him before the silence, I want to know the version of him who could hear his own laugh, I want to see who he was before that night, the version of him that existed before the world carved scars into him, the version I never got to meet.
So I click play.
The screen bursts to life, and so does he—a fifteen-year-old Lucas.
And for the next few hours, I don’t move.
I watch him.
