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The men move.

Hayley starts to follow Sage from the room.

I catch her hand.

She turns.

“I meant what I said.”

“About staying beside you?”

“Yes.”

“I meant it too.”

“This isn’t only about Navarro. If something happens⁠—”

She steps closer.

“For eighteen years, things happened to both of us because we weren’t together.”

My grip tightens around her hand.

“I should have found you.”

“You didn’t know where to look.”

“I should have kept looking.”

“Sean.”

“I won’t lose you again.”

Her other hand rises to my face.

“You found us.”

The words hit somewhere deep.

Somewhere that still remembers a nineteen-year-old boy standing outside an empty house, pounding on a locked door and calling her name.

Hayley looks toward the hall where Sage disappeared.

“We found each other.”

I lower my forehead to hers.

For one breath, I let myself hold on to that.

Then Taylor calls my name.

I step back.

The past will have to wait.

Navarro won’t.

Taylor stands beside the monitor when I return.