His laugh came out like something broken. “You think it’s one more.”
I stood too, because sitting suddenly felt impossible. “What’s the harm? She’s already dead.”
The moment the words left my mouth I wanted to shove them back in.
Gideon’s face didn’t change much.
But his eyes did.
His eyes went sharp, bright, angry in a way I rarely saw.
“That’s what you think,” he said, low. “That death is done. Finished. Closed.”
He took a step toward me.
Not threatening.
Just… close enough that I felt the weight of him.
“The dead don’t belong to us,” Gideon said. “They don’t exist for our comfort. They don’t exist to sign off on our choices because we can’t bear to make them.”
I clenched my fists. “I’m not asking for comfort. I’m asking forher.”
“And what happens,” Gideon asked, voice shaking now, just barely, “when she doesn’t sound like her?”
I froze.
Gideon’s gaze held mine. Relentless.
“What happens when you call and something answers that wears her voice like a mask?” he said. “Or when she answers and she’s… changed. Distant. Confused. Hurt by being pulled toward you when she’s finally at rest.”
My lungs felt too tight. “You’re trying to scare me.”
“I’m trying to save you,” he snapped, and the heat of it shocked me.
The garage noise outside blurred. My pulse roared in my ears.
Gideon dragged a hand over his mouth, like he was trying to hold himself together. When he spoke again, it was quieter. Worse.
“You think you want to hear her,” he said. “But what you really want is to undo the moment she left. You want to rewrite the ending so you don’t have to live with it.”
My eyes burned.
“That’s not?—”
“It is,” Gideon said, softer. “It’s human. It’s grief. It’s what grief does. It makes smart men stupid. It makes good men reckless. It makes you willing to set your own house on fire just to feel warm again.”
My breath hitched. I hated him for being right.
I hated him for seeing me.
I sank back into the chair like my legs forgot how to hold me. “So you’re just going to let me drown,” I whispered.
Gideon stared at me for a long moment.
Then he crossed the room and sat down too, slower than before, like he was choosing it. Like he was putting himself in the line of it.
“No,” he said. “I’m refusing to hand you an anchor made of stone.”
