I ignore them. My hand’s bleeding, the long mirror beside the door cracked like a spiderweb, I stare at the pattern. Blood runs down my wrist, warm and foreign but I don't try to stop it. Then the lock clicks. Someone’s gotten a keycard from Elise.
“Christ,” Ronan breathes when they see it. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”
Kiri’s already moving. “I’ll find a first aid kit.”
“I don’t think I need stitches,” I mumble. I pull myself onto the bed, chest heaving, tears burning down my face that I don’t remember starting. The breeze of their arrival chills the wet streaks and forces me to notice their existence.
Rithy grabs a towel from the bathroom, presses it against my hand, crouching in front of me, then looks at Ronan. “You have tweezers?”
Ronan nods and disappears to grab them.
Rithy looks up at me, eyes wide, worried, pitying.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I manage, voice ragged. “I’m fine.”
“Oh, you lookabsolutely fine,” he says dryly. “How silly of me to be concerned. All this is just somemodern art pieceyou’re working on.”
I huff a laugh that sounds like a sob. “I can pay for the room. For the hand. For everything I break that isn’t her. That’s all I’ve got now anyway, money and nothing else to spend it on.”
Rithy’s hand lands heavy on my knees. “She’ll come around, give it time.”
“You didn’t see her face,” I whisper.
He cradles the side of my head gently, then rubs my cheek with his thumb. “Give. It. Time. You’re more magnetic than you think.”
He tries for a wink. It’s shaky with concern, but it works enough to pull a broken grin out of me. Ronan’s back with tweezers, Kiri with the first aid kit. Between the three of them, they start piecing me back together, pulling glass from my knuckles, pressing gauze to the cuts. The towel turns crimson. None of us say much. Just the sound of breathing, the rustle of bandages, the low grunt when a shard comes loose.
My brothers, sitting in the wreckage with me. And all I can think, over and over, is that I’d give every song, every stage, every scream of applause, just to be standing in her kitchen again, watching her make tea, to see her look at me. To see her smile like this destructive cycle that I always seem to cause was finally over, like it wasn’t breaking her.
I love you. I’ll wait,I’d whispered.
And I will.
Even if it kills me.
Chapter 66
That Was Her
Rafe
The sun hits too hard in L.A., the kind of yellow that makes everything look alive even when you’re not. By the time I get to the studio, I’m running on half an hour of sleep, adrenaline, and the bitter aftertaste of too much coffee. My hand’s bandaged, the gauze white and clean against the wreckage underneath. I shove it into my hoodie pocket before anyone can ask again.
The room is full of its usual low chaos: cables, guitar cases, the smell of stale espresso and solder. We’ve been in this space for years to record, but today it feels like I’m walking into someone else’s life.
Rithy’s already behind the glass, headphones on, strumming half-heartedly through a riff. Kiri’s checking levels. Ronan’s at the kit, tapping out a rhythm, watching me like he’s waiting for a bomb to go off.
“Morning,” I mutter.
They nod, wary. The engineer glances up from the console. “You ready to roll, Obelus?”
I hesitate a second too long. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
The first few takes are nothing. My hands move, my mouth moves, the words come out, but they feel hollow, like I’m a lip-syncing ghost.The others keep glancing at each other through the glass. Ronan slows the tempo, Kiri adjusts the mix. They’re buying me time. I don’t deserve it. Halfway through the chorus, my voice cracks, not the kind that adds grit, the kind that ruins the take completely.
“Stop,” I say, holding up a hand. “Just—stop.”
The track cuts. Silence floods the space.
