…falling silent beneath my palm.
And her heart stops.
I fall back on my heels, my face turning skyward. Chest heaving, I drive a hand through my hair, caught between the breathtaking solar eclipse and the violent reckoning tearing through me.
In the eerie stillness of totality, details are luridly vivid. Collins, lying unnaturally still, her skin pale and ethereal beneath the uncanny glow. Colors drained away, shadows clawing across her motionless body on the gray sand.
Every cell of my being revolts, terror tightening like a mass beneath my ribs as I haul her body against mine. I clutch her to my chest, thumb brushing the stars along her wrist, the absence of her pulse tearing a broken sound from my throat.
The loss of her is annihilating.
This moment suspends, a moment that feels infinite, stretched like the endless fury of the ocean as it tears through me.
A storm in time.
Collapsing into a single, unbearable point—a singularity where everything stands still, as frozen as her heart.
And in the same breathless beat, I’m laying her flat along the sand, positioning myself over her. With an enraged groan, I wrench the astronomical watch from my wrist and cast it to the rocks.
I’ve known the exact month, day, hour, minute—the goddamnsecondher heart would stop. And I’ve known there would be nothing I could do to prevent it from happening. I couldn’t intervene. Couldn’t fucking save her.
But this time?—
“I can bring you back.”
I tear her drenched shirt open, removing all barriers, a touch at the boundary, and have the heel of my palm braced to her chest.
She didn’t come to me the way they did, soaked in darkness, devoid. She’s an anomaly for this reason.
My anomaly.
Without hesitation, I begin compressions, my hands centered atop the cruel scar that becomes my guide. “Come back to me,” I command, pressing down in furious demand. “Come on, starling. Collins, I know you have some fight. You have to fucking fight.”
Tilting her chin up, I seal my mouth over hers and force my breath into her lungs. Then, keeping a merciless rhythm, I count each second, each compression, each breath.
Time narrows, the eclipse holding the sky in suspended darkness. Quickly, I check for her pulse before forcing another breath into her. Each compression is a defiant plea. Each breath I breathe into her is an intimate demand to reignite her fire.
I work her heart, pumping with a determination that borders on madness. Terrified I’ll break her, desperate enough to risk it. The window to revive her shrinks, close to collapse.
Her echoes held at the threshold of loss.
Mouth hovering above hers, I whisper, “Collins, it’s entrainment. Remember? Two heartbeats aligning. Pulses matching. I need you to catch my beat, baby.”
I drive down, compressing in a relentless rhythm. My heart clenches at the give and recoil of bone beneath my hand.
The sand hard under my knees, an ache tearing through the hollow cavern inside my chest, my voice is a ragged whisper across her still lips as I count, modeling the pulse. “One—two—three—four—five?—”
At thirty, I tip her chin. Seal my mouth over hers. Breathe for her.
Palms braced over her sternum, I whisper fiercely, “Breathe.” Muscles rigid, I start to tremble. My voice cracks. “Fuck. Come on, angel. In for four…hold two…out four. Lock onto my heartbeat.”
Between compressions, my fingers tap out a cadence—her pulse; her melody—over the cage of her ribs. The beat of her fucking heart I’ve memorized.
Forehead touching hers, I say, “One rhythm. One pulse. Find your way back to me?—”
Beneath my palm, it’s faint and arrhythmic but it’s there—a flutter.
My own heart seizes, muscles frozen in an infuriating, painful grip of hope. With a trembling hand, I apply another gentle compression to her chest, coaxing her weak heartbeat to strengthen.
