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My eyes snag on the wall beside the bed—a pale rectangle burned into the wood where the grain never quite darkened. It’s subtle, the kind of mark you only notice if you’re already looking too hard, but the second I see it my chest tightens like something has reached in and closed a fist around my ribs.

I step closer.

My fingers lift, hover, then touch. The wood inside the outline is smoother, worn by time and air and presence. I trace the shape slowly, the edges familiar in a way that makes my throat ache. Near the corner there’s a tiny nick where a nail must have been pulled and reset more than once. Adjusted. Straightened. Kept right.

My picture.

Hung beside his bed. Not hidden. Not tucked away. Close enough to be the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes, the last thing he would’ve looked at before the dark took him—back when sleep was still something he negotiated with. The fading around the edges tells me it lived here a long time. Long enough for the room to remember it.

Anger flares, hot and unresolved, but it tangles immediately with something quieter, heavier. He kept me here while everything else in this space was stripped down to survival. When nothing soft was allowed to exist, I was still given a place.

And then my gaze shifts—just a few inches to the side.

Another outline. Darker. Slightly larger. The wood there is worn in a different way, the grain smoothed by time and touch. A second nail hole sits higher, more certain, like whoever hung it never doubted where it belonged.

I swallow.

The picture is still there.

Malek and Carter stand shoulder to shoulder, arms slung around each other in that careless, bone-deep way you only have before the world teaches you how to brace. I know exactly when this was taken—the moment lands sharp and unmistakable, because I was the one holding the camera.

I remember laughing at them for not standing still, for Carter leaning his full weight into Malek like gravity had opinions. This was before the Reckoning, before rot learned how to breathe, before surviving became something you had to think about. Carter’s grin is wide and reckless, the kind that assumes tomorrow is owed. Malek looks younger than I’ve ever seen him since, unguarded in a way that doesn’t exist anymore, eyes bright with something that didn’t survive what came next.

The memory hits harder than the image.

My knees give without asking permission, and I sink onto the foot of Malek’s bed, the narrow frame creaking softly under my weight. The blanket beneath my hands is folded tight, rough wool scraping my palms as I stare at the picture like it might change if I blink.

I remember lowering the camera, teasing them about how bad they were at pretending to be serious. I remember thinking—this will be one they’ll want to keep.

The air leaves my lungs.

Our pictures hang side by side.

Not one replacing the other. Not the past erased for the present. Just…both. Carter and me. The brother he lost and the woman he watched. Love that came first. Love that came later. Equal space. Equal weight.

My finger drops from the wall as I stand back up, my hand curling tight at my side as the truth settles in, slow and devastating.

This room doesn’t just hold his survival.

It holds the two people he can’t afford to lose again.

Malek moves behind me. I don’t hear him cross the room—just feel the shift, the way the air tightens when he decides to exist in it.

“I took it down once.” The words come out rough, but I feel the confession turn toward me anyway.

No preface. No explanation.

My chest stutters.

“Didn’t last.” A pause. Measured. “Didn’t belong empty.”

I turn my head just enough to see him standing there, gaze fixed on the wall, not on me. Like looking at me would make this something else.

“That was before,” he says. Then, after a beat, corrects himself. “Before I understood what stays.”

The words land heavy and exact.

“You didn’t replace him,” he adds. Not defensive. Not reassuring. Just precise. “You were never meant to.”