The wind shifts, soft as a hand on my shoulder and for the first time since everything shattered, I let myself cry.
CHAPTER37
FORGIVE ME
NATE
Everything looks different at night,like the whole world’s holding its breath and waiting for me to finally break.My legs drag through gravel and dirt, one heavy step after another, like the ground itself is trying to pull me under and keep me there.
Every sound feels too loud—the crunch of dirt under my boots, the rasp of my breath scraping at my throat, my heartbeat stuttering like it’s not convinced it wants to keep going.
I don’t remember driving here.
Don’t remember getting out of the car.
The past few days are this smeared mess of lights and noise and people touching me, shaking me, pulling me back into a world I didn’t want to stay in.
The warehouse.
The music that rattled the walls and my bones, the bass syncing up with my pulse until everything felt like it was going to blow apart.
The pills weren’t enough anymore, so I reached for something heavier.
Something I swore I’d never touch again.
Heroin.
But the second it hit, the world went quiet in a way that felt holy.My thoughts stopped clawing at the inside of my skull.For the first time since Jake died, I felt like I could breathe without bleeding for it.And then it wore off, and everything flooded back in harder, sharper, meaner.
I should’ve cared when I woke up on Connor’s couch.
Should’ve cared that Nora was passed out beside me, her mascara smeared like she’d cried herself to sleep because she didn’t know what else to do with me.
I waited for guilt or shame or even anger—something human, something that proved I was still a person—but all I felt was static, this hollow buzzing that made it seem like someone scraped out everything inside me and left an empty shell that somehow keeps walking around anyway.
My feet somehow know the way, even when the rest of me doesn’t.
Past the crooked headstones and broken angels, past names that meant something to someone once but don’t mean shit to me.The ground shifts under me, rising and falling like the earth is breathing.Everything smells like wet soil and rot and things that are supposed to stay buried.
And then—there it is.
Fresh dirt.
Black and heavy and wet, the kind that clings to your skin and won’t let go.His headstone is simple, nothing fancy, nothing polished—just his name:
Jacob Adam Sullivan
Beloved Son, Brother, Friend.
I stare at the letters until they blur, until they stop being words and turn into shapes that mean nothing and somehow hurt worse.
There are sunflowers everywhere.
They feel displaced because they’re too bright, too cheerful, too alive for a place like this.Of course Mom picked them—Jake loved them.Said they looked like they were smiling.
Said they turned to chase the sun no matter what.I used to tease him for it but now it just feels cruel.
They shouldn’t look that happy here.
