You’re in charge now.
I was twenty and suddenly ancient.
That weight never left, it just changed shape. It became plans and exits and contingencies. It became keeping people alive by not letting myself want too much. Wanting makes you careless. Wanting gives the world leverage.
Cameron now, him sitting along the side of the group, not really fitting in but needing someone just to talk to. Me not realizing I needed him just as badly as he needed me.
Then Hazel appears, bright and impossible even here, sitting cross-legged on the hood of my memory like she belongs everywhere she lands. She’s laughing, wind in her hair, saying my name like it isn’t something sharp and dangerous to hold.
I love you.
The words echo again, softer this time. Not an intrusion, but a truth I’ve been circling without touching. I remember the moment she said it—how my chest locked up, how fear surged so fast it disguised itself as discipline. I remember thinking that if I didn’t respond, if I just stayed quiet, I could keep her safe from me.
I was wrong.
Her voice cuts through the haze again, closer now, real enough that something in my chest aches. “Zack,” she says, and this time there’s no laughter in it. Just insistence. “Stay.”
I try to answer.
My mouth doesn’t move.
Frustration flares briefly, then fades, replaced by something quieter and more dangerous: the realization that I don’t want to go anywhere. That whatever this space is, whatever waits beyond it, I’m not done here. There are people I haven’t protected yet. Words I haven’t said.
Her face swims into focus beside me—not memory, not dream. Real. Eyes red. Jaw tight. Determined in that way that tells me she’s already decided something and the universe can argue with her if it wants.
She’s holding my hand.
The pressure is faint, but it’s there, anchoring me more effectively than any command ever could.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispers, her voice breaking just enough to hurt. “You don’t get to leave me with unfinished sentences.”
Something in me shifts.
I cling to that pressure, that warmth, that stubborn, infuriating, life-saving presence like it’s a lifeline. Because it is. Because loving her didn’t make me weak—it made me careless in the best possible way.
The beeping grows louder. Sharper. The world tilts.
I don’t wake up.
But I don’t let go, either.
And somewhere between breaths, with machines doing the work my body hasn’t caught up to yet, I make a promise I don’t know how to say out loud, but I’m coming back to her.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I LOVE YOU, I’M SORRY
HAZEL
Hospitals have a very specific kind of quiet. Not the peaceful kind, but the kind that hums with borrowed time, where machines breathe for people who can’t yet do it themselves. Where every sound feels amplified because you’re listening for one thing and one thing only. I sit in the chair beside Zack’s bed with my fingers laced through his, careful not to disturb the web of tubes and wires that keep him here with us as I try not to count the seconds between the steady beeps because that way lies madness.
He looks smaller like this.
Not weak—Zack could never be that—but contained, tucked into white sheets and sterile light like the world finally convinced him to rest whether he wanted to or not. There’s dried blood still visible near his abdomen beneath the clean bandages, a reminder of how close everything came to breaking open completely. I press my thumb gently against his knuckles likethe contact alone might tether him better than any machine ever could.
The room is crowded in the quietest way possible.
Cameron stands near the window, arms folded, posture rigid like if he relaxes even a little the guilt might knock him flat. Leyla sits beside him on the edge of the couch, her fingers intertwined with his, their knees touching, her presence anchored there like she’s afraid to let go of anything real ever again. Lincoln leans against the wall near the foot of the bed, arms crossed, eyes sharp and tired, tracking every rise and fall of Zack’s chest like it’s data he refuses to misread.
