The heat is unbearable now.
The smoke is so thick Jake starts to disappear, his outline dissolving into shadow and flame.My vision tunnels, black creeping in from the edges, whether from the drugs or the smoke or both, I don’t know.
Don’t fight it,the voice croons.You’re tired.Haven’t you done enough?
I keep my eyes on him anyway, even as the world blurs.
Even as my body gives up.
I whisper everything I never said, everything I thought I’d have more time for, my words swallowed by the roar of the fire.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe.“I’m so fucking sorry.For all of it.”
He can’t hear you,the Devil says.But I can.
The flames reach for me with greedy, familiar hands.Heat wraps around my skin.
Smoke floods my chest so I finally close my eyes, surrendering to the dark as it finally pulls me under.
If there’s anything left on the other side, I hope it’s him.
And if there isn’t?—
At least the Devil won’t be alone anymore.
CHAPTER31
WALKING THROUGH FIRE
NORA
The orange glowcuts through the night like a wound in the sky, and I know—God, I know—before Jay even fully stops the car that something is wrong.The house is burning.
Actually burning.
Flames claw at the shattered windows, smoke billowing into the dark like the house is exhaling its last, scorched breath.
But the moment my feet hit the ground, I’m still half in the car—half in the phone call that started all of this.
Jay’s voice had been low, ragged, threaded with a fear I wasn’t used to hearing from him.
“Do you know where Nate is?”
I’d tried to answer, but my brain had short-circuited—static, useless.I remembered Nate mentioning he was meeting Jake at some house but he should’ve been back an hour ago.
My stomach had twisted even before Jay spoke again.
“Nora, I don’t have a good feeling about this.We have to find him.”
Hearing those words from him—steady, unshakeable Jay—sent the same cold dread through me that I felt the day I found Dad lying still on our living room floor.
Then the call ended, and Jay was suddenly on my doorstep, barely breathing.
“We have to go.Now.”
The drive was a blur—headlights streaking past, my pulse too loud, Jay’s hands gripping the wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white.The air smelled like panic long before the smoke reached us.One thought kept looping through my mind the entire way here, pulsing in time with my heartbeat:
Please.Please don’t let it be too late.
