“Dad!” I stumbled barefoot onto the damp lawn, cold dew soaking my skin. “Dad, please!”
He paused. Just for a second. The twitch in his jaw was the only indication he’d heard me. But he didn’t look at me.
“Look at me!” My voice broke, raw and shrill. “Please… I’m begging you. Don’t go.”
His hand tightened around the door handle. He didn’t blink. Didn’t falter. His face was as unreadable as stone. “I have to,” he said, as if it was a confession to a priest. Final. Lifeless. The car door slammed shut with a hollow echo that knocked the breath from my chest.
“Would you stay even if I begged?” I rasped, reaching for him like a child trying to catch sunlight between trembling fingers. “Please…please… we can help each other. I still need you. I?—”
Tears streamed down my face, dripping from my chin, soaking the collar of my shirt. I didn’t even bother wiping them away.
My dad blinked at me once. Then twice. And then… he drove away. He didn’t look back. Did I mean that little to him?
The scream that tore from me was primal. A sound I didn’t recognize. It broke something inside. Something lost and desperate and wounded beyond repair.
My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the road, gravel biting into my skin. Cold sank into me, fingers and toes numb, and still I stayed there. Maybe if I stayed long enough, he’d turn around. Maybe if I bled out the grief right here on the street, he’d feel it in his chest and come back.
But he didn’t.
He left me to rot in the ashes of everything our family once was.
“Elliot!”
Anthony’s voice—far away at first, then closer. Urgent. Breaking.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Couldn’t even breathe.
The sky was bleeding into pink. The world spun; the mist swallowed the horizon. Everything flickered like it didn’t want to exist.
“Elliot!”
The last thing I saw before everything went black was the road stretching out in front of me like a grave. Then there were strong arms wrapping around me just before my head cracked the asphalt.
“I’ve got you, baby boy. I’ve got you.” His voice was gravel and honey, fierce and soft all at once.
And I broke.
I almost pulled back. Almost told him to let go. Because the last person I’d reached for had just walked away — and I didn’t know if I could survive that twice.
Every scream, every sob I’d buried beneath my ribs erupted. I screamed into Anthony’s chest until my throat tore. And blood was all I could taste. I clawed at his shirt, his arms, like I wanted to tear myself out of my own skin. Like maybe if I screamed loud enough, my dad would come back.
But Anthony never let go.
He cradled me against his chest as if I was something precious and breakable, rubbing soothing circles into my spine, whispering words I couldn’t hear over the sound of my own grief.
Eventually, the screams dulled into broken sobs.
Tears into whimpers.
Only then did I feel it. The sting in my knees. The raw burn along my palms. The dull, throbbing ache in my wrist where I’d landed wrong. The cold damp of the road clung to my skin, grit embedded in places that already hurt.
I flinched without meaning to.
Anthony stilled. “You’re hurt,” he murmured, pulling back just enough to look at me. His thumb brushed gently over my scraped knuckles, then down to my knees where blood had already dried in dark streaks. “Jesus, Elliot…”
He cupped my face carefully, like I might fracture. “Does anything feel broken?”
He carried me inside as if I weighed nothing. Like I wasn’t a dead star collapsing under my own gravity. My fingers were still curled into his shirt as he laid me on the couch.
