Page 172 of Break Me

My hand presses weakly against his chest, feeling the steady rhythm beneath my palm.

"And I'm still choosing you," I whisper. The certainty in my voice never falters. "Nothing changes that."

His eyes squeeze shut.

"Raven..." My name breaks apart on his breath.

A tear slips free, warm against my cheek as he rests his forehead against mine.

"Please," he whispers. “Don’t talk like that. Stay with me. Please. Just stay.”

I take a breath. It doesn’t come as easily. But I find it.

“I am,” I whisper. “You just won’t always see me the same way.”

“I need you here,” he says, his voice raw now, stripped of everything but the truth of it. “I need you with me.”

I smile even as everything begins to soften at the edges.

“You’ll still have me,” I whisper. “In the quiet. In the places we’ve been. In the moments you don’t expect.”

“I’m not going anywhere you can’t find me,” I breathe the words like they’re already drifting somewhere just beyond me. “You just have to look a little differently.”

He presses his face into my hair, his breath breaking in uneven pulls as he holds me closer, like he’s trying to keep me here through sheer force.

“No,” he begs. “Please don’t do this. Don’t leave me. I don’t know who I am without you.”

I take one more breath.

It’s shallow.

But enough.

“I love you,” I whisper. “Forever.”

The word settles against him, and I feel the way his arms tighten, the way his breath breaks where he’s pressed close to me.

“I love you,” he says, tears slipping into my hair and along my temple. Something I register more than I understand. “I love you, Raven. I love you so damn much.”

My chest lifts.

It doesn’t go as far this time.

I try again.

The air catches somewhere deep, and I stay there for a second. My body is waiting for something that doesn’t quite arrive the way it should.

His voice is still there saying my name, but it’s farther now, like I’m hearing it from just beneath the surface of something I can’t quite push through.

My fingers rest over his heart, and I feel it, strong and steady beneath my palm, a rhythm that doesn’t match mine anymore.

I hold onto that.

To him.

To this.

The water moves beside us, the sound of it constant, low, threading through everything. I feel my hand at the edge of it, my fingers barely touching the surface. The cold of it is dulled, distant, like it belongs to something outside of me now.