But I’m not walking away, no matter how hard she pushes me. I don’t care how long it takes. She’s everything, my literal heart outside my body, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she knows it.
24
EMMA
The moment I step out of the hospital doors, I take the deepest breath I’ve taken in days. The air outside is brisk, cold enough that it cuts through the thin cotton of my shirt, but I welcome it, denying a blanket when the discharge nurse asks me if I want one, telling me that it’s significantly colder now than it was when I first got here.
I want to feel something, anything that isn’t the constant physical ache in my chest or the crushing sense of inevitability that I’ve been choking on since the doctor looked me in the eyes three months ago and told me I was in heart failure.
The air smells of pine, damp pavement, and wood smoke from a nearby chimney. It should feel like comfort. Instead, the weight settles heavily in my bones. I might’ve walked out of the hospital, but I didn’t leave any of my problems behind.
I took them with me.
All the fear, all the questions, all the time I don’t have, followed me out those doors.
Frankie is leaning against his truck at the curb, arms folded across his chest like he’s been waiting forever. His hair is a mess and the shirt under his jacket is half wrinkled. He straightenswhen he sees me, pressing his lips together like he’s not sure what to say.
I don’t make it easy for him. I cross my arms and raise a brow. “You lose a bet or something?"
That makes him huff a laugh, a familiar smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, actually. Cam won rock-paper-scissors.”
I roll my eyes as he walks toward me and grabs the bag of the belongings I apparently came here with. I let him. My limbs feel like they’re filled with lead and I don’t have the energy to protest. The ache behind my ribs hasn’t gone away since the moment I collapsed. Every breath feels too shallow, every movement a reminder of the ticking time bomb inside of me.
The drive home is quiet at first, only the sound of the tires moaning against the road and the occasional click of Frankie drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. I lean my head against the cold window glass, watching the pine trees and rooftops dusted in frost blur past. Windhaven is quiet and slow and small in a way that once made me claustrophobic, but now it feels almost…safe.
Frankie exhales something’s been sitting in his chest for too long. “I need to say something.”
I blink, turning my head to look at him. “This is new.” I don’t know if he’s said even five words to me since I moved back months ago.
He ignores my comment. “I was mad at you when you left for New York.”
My body stills at the words.
He’s not looking at me, simply staring ahead at the road like it’s easier to talk to the trees than to his twin sister. “Not just mad,” he adds, softer now. “I was… hurt.”
My stomach twists. “Frankie, I?—”
“I needed you, Em.” His voice is low and raw, cracking at the edges like, as he has held the words in for too long. For the firsttime in a long time, I hear the hurt underneath the sarcasm he always hides behind. “We were always together. You were my best friend. And then one day, you just… left.”
I blink, caught off guard by his honesty.
“I didn’t leave for nothing,” I whisper in response. “I had to?—”
“You didn’t think about how it would affect any of us.”
I swallow. The guilt feels like bile rising in the back of my throat. I know when I left Windhaven it wasn’t easy on my brothers, but I guess I never really stopped to think about what it was like for them, for him.
We were inseparable growing up. We spent every summer running around barefoot, riding bareback down the trails, making up stories about the animals in the barn like they were characters in some epic fairy tale. Frankie and Emma, the Diaz twins. That’s what everyone in town referred to us as.
But I left, and Frankie stayed. I boarded a plane to New York and didn’t look back, burying my roots so deep I thought they wouldn’t matter anymore.
But they did matter. Theydomatter.
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Frankie?—”
“I wasted so much time being mad at you.” He interrupts, voice dropping down again. “And now… now we don’t know how much time we have and I?—”
That sentence right there is what breaks me. Not the hospital, or the diagnosis. Not even seeing the look on Alex’s face the last time I told him to leave.
