When my head broke the surface, the world returned in pieces instead of all at once. Cold air burned my lungs. Sound rushed back in too loud, too sharp. My vision flickered and blurred like an old film reel skipping frames. I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the water began—I felt poured into the world instead of separate from it.
Mom’s voice brushed the edges of my thoughts. Not loud. Not clear. Just a softness. A warmth. The echo of something that had once kept me safe.
Calling me home.
Anthony’s arms locked around me like iron. Like prayer. Like something sacred and frantic all at once. His chest heaved against my back. His hands were trembling so badly I could feel it in my bones. He was crying—not quietly, not carefully—but inbroken, tearing sounds like something inside him had split open and didn’t know how to close again.
“Don’t you fucking leave me,” he sobbed into my hair. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare.”
The words hit me harder than the cold had. Harder than the fall.
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t trying to.
That I just hadn’t known how to stay.
But my mouth wouldn’t work. My body wouldn’t listen. All I could do was hang there in his arms like something found instead of something saved.
Voices crowded in around us. Shapes and movement and light pressed against my closed eyes. Hands touched my shoulders, my wrists, my face. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“Sir, you shouldn’t have?—”
“Like fuck I wasn’t going to save him.”
“You need to let us?—”
“Hello, my sweet boy.”
The world softened. Not faded. Softened. Like someone had turned the edges down. I didn’t feel anything anymore.
“Mom…”
That was the last thing I remembered.
CHAPTER 18
ANTHONY
The room was too white. White walls. White sheets. White light humming overhead that never dimmed enough to feel like night. It smelled like antiseptic and plastic and something faintly sweet that I couldn’t place.
It made my stomach turn.
Elliot lay still in the bed, too still, like the world had finally gone quiet enough for him to vanish inside it. White sheets. White walls. White light that never dimmed enough to feel like night. A thin tube ran beneath his nose. A clear line disappeared into the skin of his arm. Machines whispered and clicked beside him, translating his existence into numbers.
I sat in the chair beside the bed with my hands locked together so tightly my knuckles had gone pale. I couldn’t stop shaking. Not violently. Not obviously. Just a constant, fine tremor under my skin—like my body had forgotten how to be still.
His chest rose as I watched. Fell. Rose again. Each breath felt like permission. Each breath felt borrowed. I leaned forward until my elbows rested on my knees, staring at him like if I looked away he might stop.
“I did this,” I whispered. The words dropped into the space between us and went nowhere. “I did this to you.”
My throat burned. My eyes felt dry and swollen at the same time, like they couldn’t decide whether to cry or not. My chest hurt in a way that didn’t feel physical. It was pressure, and heat, and something corrosive all at once—like guilt had teeth and was chewing its way through me from the inside.
“You trusted me,” I murmured. “You trusted me with your body. With your heart. With your grief.” My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “And I still broke you.”
A nurse came in quietly, adjusted a line, checked his vitals, and smiled at me the way people do when they don’t know what to say but want to acknowledge that you’re suffering.
“He’s stable,” she said gently. “He’s just very exhausted. His body went through a lot.”
All I could manage was a pathetic nod. I couldn’t make myself speak. When she left, the room felt even smaller.
