I stop myself.Breathe.This is how people get hurt.
She studies my face, and for a second I think she might say something that cracks me open further. Instead, she nods once, controlled.
“Okay,” she says. “Then stay on task.” Her voice is hard, thrown at me like verbal knives that I had only given to her.
She turns away before I can respond, light sweeping the far wall, already back in motion. Professional, composed. Exactly what I asked for, and I hate every single moment of it.
It feels like a loss, anyway. I feel as though everything we’ve worked so hard toward, came crashing down around me, and I have no one to blame but myself.
I push forward, forcing my thoughts back where they belong, scanning the floor again, the walls, the way the sound shifts near the far corner. This time I catch it—a subtle inconsistency in the echo, a place where the warehouse doesn’t quite answer itself.
There.
My pulse spikes, clean and sharp, the distraction snapping into clarity at last. I gesture for Hazel, and she’s there instantly, all focus, all trust, like nothing between us is broken at all. Like I didn’t ruin absolutely everything.
And maybe it isn’t.
Maybe it’s just waiting.
As I kneel to examine the seam in the concrete, the thought slips in uninvited and dangerous:
If I don’t survive this, she’ll be the last person I hurt.
I shove it down and get to work.
Because Cameron and Leyla are still breathing somewhere behind this lie, and whatever I’m running from inside my own head will have to wait.
For now.
But the static doesn’t fade; it settles into my body and I let it settle over me, because there’s no more turning back, not for me, not for this moment. And that's when it happens. Hazel presses the floor and it opens up to another room, and all I hear is Hazel’s voice.
“Oh fuck.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
TAKE A WALK
HAZEL
The door isn’t really a door.
It’s a seam that shouldn’t exist, a line in the concrete that only shows itself when you stop believing the room is what it’s pretending to be. Zack pries it open with controlled force, metal screaming softly in protest, and a breath of colder air spills out like the building has been holding it back on purpose.
Stairs descend into the dark, and though everything in my soul is telling me that this is bad news, I know better than to go against my gut—so we walk in anyway.
My heart stutters, expect it’s not with fear, but with certainty.This is it.The feeling settles deep and solid in my chest, the kind that doesn’t ask questions anymore, the kind that knows that this little path of life is coming to a close.
Zack goes first—because of course he does—his body already angled to shield me if he has to, protecting me like I know he would. Even if it means something is going to happen, it’s goingto happen to him first. I follow close behind, one hand brushing the wall, the other clenched tight around the flashlight. The steps are narrow, uneven, the concrete damp under my boots. The further down we go, the quieter the world becomes, like sound itself is being swallowed.
The space at the bottom is small. A room carved out of necessity rather than design, lit by a single exposed bulb that hums faintly overhead. The smell hits me first—stale air, sweat, something chemical and sharp that makes my eyes sting.
And then I see them.
Leyla is sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, her knees pulled to her chest, hair tangled and shorter than I remember, barely above her chin, eyes sunken but burning bright with disbelief. Cameron is beside her, one arm curled protectively around her shoulders, his posture stiff and defensive even in exhaustion. They both look thinner. Older. Like time has pressed down on them hard and refused to let up.
For a second, none of us move.
Then Leyla’s breath catches, her eyes blinking a couple times as if not truly believing that we’re really here.
