When he lifted my hands out of the water, my chest seized, air catching somewhere between my lungs and my throat. I wasn’t crying anymore—just gasping, watching them tremble like they belonged to someone else. The blood that was once on them seemed to drain the oxygen from the room, from my body, from everything. They felt marked—guilty—like if I stared long enough, they’d start to close around my throat until I couldn’t breathe, until their ghosts demanded retribution. My life for the three of theirs.
“Hey, hey,” he said quickly, catching my face between his palms again. “Look at me, Lillian. Just breathe. I’ve got you.”
The world was spinning, but he kept repeating it until my breaths started matching his. He skated his thumb along my cheek in reassurance...and then his hand stilled. With a hesitant touch, he slid his fingers under my chin and tilted my head to the side, angling it so the light caught beneath my jaw, where my skin still burned.
“What happened here?” He hovered over the scrape, careful not to hurt me. “You’re bleeding.”
My stomach dropped. “Oh—it’s nothing. I just pinned my hijab too tight. Happens all the time.”
“Are you in pain?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He gave me a long look—one that said he’d catalogued every one of my tells by now and that lie tripped all the alarms. But he didn’t push. He grabbed the first-aid kit from the medicine cabinet, flipped it open, and dampened a cotton pad. The sting was harsh, but his touch was unbearably tender. He cleaned the cut, peeled open a Band-Aid, and pressed it to my neck.
“There,” he said, eyes lingering on the spot. “Just...be careful next time. And don’t wrap your hijab so tight. These red marks look like you’ve been strangled, or something.”
I nodded, keeping my gaze on the floor.
“One sec,” he said, stepping into the hall. His footsteps faded, and when he returned, he carried a folded bundle of clothes. “I’ll...give you some privacy.”
After he left, I looked at what he’d set on the counter—an unfamiliar cotton top, dark and worn, and a pair of my pajama bottoms. When I lifted the shirt, a faint trace of cedar and soap clung to the fabric, and beneath that, warmth.Hiswarmth. The shirt belonged to him.
I dried off slowly, the towel dragging across limbs that didn’t quite feel like mine, then pulled the shirt over my head. It hung past my thighs, the fabric brushing against skin still tingling where his hands had been.
My reflection caught me off guard—eyes swollen, lips colorless, neck red. I looked like someone who’d crawled out of a wreck and hadn’t yet decided if she’d survived it.
Once I finally opened the door, Khalifa was there, leaning against the wall like he’d been standing guard. His eyes searched my face with a gentleness that only made the pain worse.
“Are you feeling better?”
I tried to say yes, but my throat closed the moment I attempted to make it sound convincing, blurring the outline of him until he was little more than a silhouette.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand. “Let’s have a sleepover.”
In his room, he turned down the sheets and waited until I slipped beneath them before tucking the blanket around me with tender care. Then he sat on top of the covers beside me, back against the headboard, his legs stretched long.
When his hand found my hair, I didn’t flinch. I moved closer, letting my head rest in his lap. His hesitation was brief; then his fingers began to move, combing through the strands.
“I went to medical school for three years, you know,” he said suddenly. “Dropped out the summer before my last year.”
I didn’t reply, but my chin tilted toward his voice in surprise, like some part of me that wasn’t numb wanted to listen.
“I also had an older brother,” he went on. “Keenan. He was my father’s favorite. That’s why he treats me the way he does. He blames me for his death because I was there when it happened.”
It all clicked at once—so fast it made me feel stupid for not seeing it sooner. The photos in his room where he was smiling the widest, shoulder-to-shoulder with a boy who looked enough like him to be family. His father snapping his name like a comparison, like Khalifa was a failed sequel to someone better. And that night, when he’d gone still and said,He passed away.
Not a best friend.
Hisbrother.
And suddenly every silence, every flinch, every carefully controlled emotion made devastating, awful sense.
His touch shifted to my face, thumb grazing my temple. “We were on a road trip that summer and got into an accident. I tried to save him, but by the time the ambulance came, he was already gone. The way it broke me...” His voice gave out for a moment. “I knew I could never be a doctor, could never handle losing people all the time. So I quit, and chose the simplest, most boring, unfeeling thing I could.History. Nothing could hurt me with history, nothing could take me by surprise, nothing could makeme feel the way that day did. You can’t lose anyone in history. You can only read about them.”
He looked down at me. “But you aren't me, Lillian. You’re the opposite in every way, but most importantly in howbraveyou are, how you walk straight into fire, like the flames have better luck fearing you than you fearing them.” He let a small chuckle slip through. “You wear your heart on your sleeve, and I know you think that’s your fatal flaw, but it isn’t. It’s your greatest gift. Anyone can run from their emotions—that’s the easy way out. But staying, feeling everything, letting it crack you open and rebuild you? That’s strength.” He took a breath, as if steadying himself for the truth. “That’s how I know you’ll get through this. You won’t let it break you the way it broke me. You’ll take this sadness, this pain, and use it to make yourself an even better doctor. You’ll turn it into something that saves more people, something that changes them. Because that’s who you are.”
