"How'd we both end up here? Your body broken. My heart... apparently not much better."
A soft, humorless laugh escaped me.
"I guess pain calls to pain, huh?"
I reached for his hand again, tracing the ridge of his knuckles with my thumb.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I admitted, voice barely above a breath. "Everyone thinks I'm this... put-together person. Pretty. Bubbly. Unbreakable."
A sad smile tugged at my lips.
"But I'm not. I'm tired. I'm lonely. And I keep loving people who don't pick me back."
The monitor beeped. Steady. Unchanged. "I thought Garrett would choose me. I thought if I was good enough—pretty enough, fun enough—he'd finally stop looking at everyone else."
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat.
"You're the only person in my life who can't lie to me right now," I murmured, folding my hands over his. "Or pretend. Or expect anything from me."
The thought both comforted and gutted me.
"I'm such a mess," I confessed. "And I pretend I'm not. For Emma. For my followers. For... him."
A beat.
"I spent years waiting for Garrett to want me the way I wanted him.Years pretending I didn't see the other girls—pretending it didn't matter."
My voice went quiet.
"But it did. It does."
I let out a small, watery laugh. "Isn't that pathetic? Sitting here falling apart over a guy while you're fighting to stay alive."
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and reached for my phone—
A finger twitched.
Right there. Next to the phone. His index finger, barely a millimeter of movement.
I froze.
No. You imagined it. You're exhausted. You're seeing things.
I stared at his hand, breath held.
Nothing.
Just the same stillness. The same unmoving knuckles I'd been tracing for hours.
See? Nothing. You're losing it, Candace.
I let out a shaky exhale and reached for the phone again—
Another twitch. Stronger this time. His whole hand shifting against the sheets.
My heart slammed into my ribs.
"Sebastian?"
