The way he lied.
I love him.
I hate him.
I miss him.
Ineverwant to see him again.
The emotions war inside me, contradictory and consuming, until I can’t tell where one feeling ends and another begins.
All I know is that I’m broken.
And I have no idea how to put myself back together.
When Sage comes back twenty minutes later, arms full of takeout containers, she finds me on the sofa, my phone still clutched in my hand, tear tracks drying on my cheeks.
She sets the food aside, covers me with another blanket, and settles into the chair across from me, keeping watch.
Because that’s what best friends do.
They stay.
Even when you make terrible decisions.
Even when you’re falling apart.
Even when you’ve just made a mistake that might cost you everything.
What have I done?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
NITRO
The phone shatters my sleep at 2:47 a.m., the shrill ring cutting through the darkness like a blade. I’m awake instantly, my heart already pounding before my conscious mind catches up to why.
Nothing good ever comes from a call at this hour.
“Yeah,” I rasp, sitting up so fast the room spins.
“Nitro.” It’s Martha, the night nurse at Sunset Manor.
Her voice is wrong.
All wrong.
Shaking. Terrified.
“There’s a fire. The building, oh God, the building is—”
The rest of her words disappear into a wall of sound. Screaming. Sirens. The roar of something terrible and hungry.
My blood instantly turns to ice.
“Queenie,” I choke out, already moving, my legs carrying me before my brain fully processes what’s happening. With my phone pressed to my ear, I grab my jeans, yanking them on with one hand. “Where is she? Is she out?”
“I don’t… I can’t… There are so many people, and the smoke—”
