It looks like a florist exploded in the middle of the night.White petals are everywhere—on the hardwood like snowdrifts, caught in the grooves of the stairs, crushed into the rug like they tried to hold on and failed.There’s a strange beauty to it, if I’m being generous.
A kind of soft, tragic aftermath.
Last night was joy and lights and music.This morning is everything that’s left when the performance ends.
But that’s not why I’m awake at seven in the morning, wandering through a dying garden someone forgot to clean up.
I’m looking for Jake.
Because the things he said last night didn’t just stick—they sank.They’ve been looping through my head in a slow, relentless drag that feels like trying to swim through cement.
His voice cracking.
The shame in his eyes.
The quiet, desperate way he said he didn’t know what to do anymore.
Hope is a dangerous thing in this house.It’s cost me more than I ever got back.But some part of me—the part that taught Jake how to ollie on a skateboard, the part that used to give him my half of the blanket because he hated sleeping cold—that part hasn’t let go.
I step over a trail of petals leading up the stairs.They stick to the bottom of my foot, soft and damp.
Jake’s door is closed.But still, something feels off.
I knock lightly.“Jake?”
No answer.
I try again, louder this time.
“Jake, you awake?”
Nothing.
A pulse of dread thuds behind my ribs.
Fuck it.
I open the door.
His bed looks like he fought someone in it—covers twisted, pillows thrown.The room’s empty, but the window’s open, curtains shifting in the morning breeze like they’re keeping time with someone’s ragged breath.
And then I see him.
Sitting on the roof outside, silhouette framed by the early light.Shoulders hunched and head bowed slightly.Watching the sunrise like he’s waiting for it to tell him something important.My chest tightens so sharply it feels like a fist around my heart.
He looks young sitting there like that.Somehow, he looks like the kid I swore I’d protect from everything—especially from the man who raised us.
I move to the window.
“Cool if I join you?”
He doesn’t look over but he nods, the tiniest movement.
“Sure.”
The path out the window is pure muscle memory—hand on the frame, right foot on the solid tile, left foot skimming past the one that always shifts.I’ve done this climb more times than I can count.Nights slipping away from our father’s temper, afternoons hiding from Moira’s venom.
And mornings like this they always pull me back to when it was just us up here, on this roof, believing the only place we could breathe was ten feet above the world.
