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The dream is gone, but it’s left fingerprints all over me. I can still feel Fletch’s lips on my forehead. Still hear the promise he carved into my bones.

I will stop loving you when the sky falls.

And maybe it already has.

Maybe that’s what this place is. The hollow after the crash. The space where love and loss bleed together until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

Something shifts.

Not inside me—around me.

A flicker.

Like a radio tuning into a new station.

“…think she squeezed my hand just now…”

The voice is blurry. Familiar. Like a memory dipped in fog.

“…no change in the scans…”

Another flicker.

“…don’t give up on her, okay? She’s stubborn as hell. She’s just… resting.”

A breath catches in my chest.

Not a real breath. Not yet.

But it feels like one.

The sound of someone pulling a chair closer. The rustle of paper. A soft exhale.

A palm—warm and calloused—wraps gently around mine.

And I know that touch.

It’s Fletch’s.

A tear slips from the edge of my dream.

Not in the real world. Not yet.

But somewhere deep in this limbo, a tether tightens.

Because even in the dark, someone’s waiting for me.

And maybe the sky has fallen.

But maybe there’s still something worth waking up for.

Chapter Seventeen

MYA

Pain doesn’t come first.

Light does.