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My jaw tightens. I swallow. The fight leaks out of me.

I exhale, slow and heavy. “He’s not here anymore,” I say, the words rough from disuse. “You don’t have to do this.”

Malek steps closer, until his breath ghosts the cold skin of my cheek and the air tightens around him.

“Selah,” he says. A pause—almost imperceptible, almost nothing. “Don’t look away.”

I make myself meet his eyes.

His voice stays low, controlled—the sound of a man who’s measured grief and learned where it stops mattering.

“He’s not here because of you.”

It lands quiet—almost gentle—but it splits me open all the same.

Malek steps into my space, deliberate, lowering his head until his breath spills against my ear like a warning.

“Don’t think I forget,” he murmurs, voice rough. “Every time I look at you, I see the space he should be standing in. The blood he paid. My brother’s gone—and you’re still here. Stealing the breath that should be his.”

The words land heavy, one after another, not loud but brutal—each one edged with a grief so sharp it feels like it’s slicing him open too. My head fills before I can stop it.

“I didn’t choose this—any of this.” The thought settles like truth—even though it isn’t.

The car ride. The cracked vinyl seat sticking to my legs. My friend talking too fast, laughing too loud, dragging me a town over just to outrun her own wreckage. The porch light at Carter’s place buzzing like it might die any second. His face when he saw me—dark, furious, hurt buried so deep it looked like rage.

You swore you’d be here.

Then the sound—wood splintering. The weight of the mailman clearing the rail. Teeth sinking into Carter’s throat with a wet, animal snap. Blood spraying hot and fast, faster than his breath could keep up. His hands clawing at nothing. The screaming—mine, someone’s—burning itself raw until there was only silence and the smell of copper in the air.

God help me, he’s right.

“You don’t need to remind me,” I whisper, my throat tightening like it wants to close for good. “I live with it every goddamn day. His death carved me hollow.”

My voice trembles. I don’t bother fighting it.

“You don’t need to keep cutting,” I say, quieter now. “You already took your pound of flesh.”

The words fall between us and just sit there.

For a moment, neither of us moves.

He watches me like he’s trying to decide what’s left of me—what the world took,

what grief hollowed out, what I’ve chosen to hold onto.

His jaw ticks once.

“What’s left?” he asks quietly.

That simple question feels like it might undo me.

I look away, jaw tight. “Nothing,” I say.

A lie.

A truth.

I don’t know.