Because in that moment, something inside my mind refuses to accept what just happened.
It breaks.
And the truth fractures into something my heart can survive.
Clara didn’t die. She can’t die. Because there’s always a way. There has to be. And that’s when my mind creates the only version of the world I can live with. A version where Clara is still alive. Where I can still call her. Still hear her voice. Still believe she’s out there somewhere. And suddenly I understand the most terrifying truth of all.
For the last two months…
The Clara I’ve been talking to…
Was never really there.
CHAPTER 26
Other lifetime
Pain is a strange thing.
Memories break apart, Images fade, moments scatter into fragments I can barely hold onto.
But pain…
Pain stays whole, no pieces, no missing parts. Just one solid weight sitting in my chest. I feel all of it. The same sharp ache from that day in the hospital. The same crushing grief. No less, no more, exactly the same. My body folds in on itself as the sobs finally break free.
I cry.
And cry.
The kind of crying that shakes your whole body, like your ribs are cracking open just to let the grief out. The room around me disappears. The past crashes into the present and for a moment I am both people at once.
Era.
Sera.
Both feeling the same loss. Both mourning the same sister.
Dominic kneels beside me. He doesn’t say anything. He just gathers me into his arms, carefully. Like I might shatter if he moves too fast. He lifts me from the couch and carries me upstairs. The house is quiet except forthe storm outside. Thunder rolls through the distance as rain taps against the windows. He lays me down on the bed but he doesn’t leave. He climbs in beside me and pulls the blanket over us. Then he wraps himself around me.
One arm around my waist. The other resting over my trembling hands. Holding me together, like he’s been doing this for years.
And maybe he has.
I cry into the pillow until there are no tears left until my body finally goes still from exhaustion but Dominic never lets go.
He stays there. Breathing softly behind me. Holding me like he’s afraid that if he loosens his grip even for a second…
I might disappear again.
And somewhere in the quiet between thunder and rain…
I realize something that breaks my heart all over again. All this time I thought I was alone inside my own mind. Lost between two lives, two versions of myself but Dominic was there, always. Holding the space for whichever version of me needed to survive.
And as sleep slowly pulls me under, one final thought drifts through my mind.
Era lost her sister. Sera lost her truth.
But tonight, for the first time, we both finally know what really happened.
