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Tears spill down my face as my entire body begins to shake.

My knees hit the floor, but someone immediately lifts me and settles me onto the couch.

There’s chaos around me, but I can’t hear any of it. My ears ring loudly, and tears blur my vision until everything becomes indistinct.

“Zayn,” I try to say his name through broken sobs. “Please.”

I grip Ethan’s hand when I finally notice him kneeling in front of me, but I can’t hear a single word he says.

“I want Zayn,” I try again, the words breaking apart between sobs.

Then I collapse against him, crying uncontrollably as Thalia rubs my back.

When I finally lift my head from Ethan’s shoulder, I see Sierra crying just as hard in Nick’s arms, while Liam tries to comfort her, tears filling his own eyes.

All around us, the room is full of men staring at me, their faces stricken with fear.

And suddenly, all I can think is that God gave me the love of my life on borrowed time… Only to take him away before I truly learned how to live inside that love.

“Zayn… where are you? Please come home.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

Selene

They say you never realize what you have until you lose it, and you never understand how much it means to you until the pain of losing it finally tears through you.

I used to think I lived in a haze during certain moments of my life. I used to think I suffered. I used to think I knew what pain was.

Even when I broke up with him, I thought I was hurting.

Now I look back and want to laugh bitterly at myself. Only now do I understand what suffering really is. Only now does every tiny part of my body ache with such relentless intensity that I can barely stand being inside my own skin.

Only now am I learning how to breathe through pain. Only now am I trying to reconnect with reality, reaching for something—anything—to hold onto, only to find nothing within my grasp.

Only now, here in the sterile hallway of this hospital, do I realize that every obstacle Zayn and I ever faced was nothing more than a cruel joke compared to what I’m living through now.

Surrounded on all sides by his brothers, Sierra, and Thalia, I should feel protected.

Instead, I feel painfully alone.

Lost.

Destroyed.

Sierra is his sister. I should be comforting her, but I can’t seem to pull myself out of this trance-like state. My body is here, surrounded by people, but some part of me still feels trapped somewhere between the moment we saw the accident and the terrifying possibility of what might be happening behind that door.

Liam is his brother. I should be comforting him too, yet he’s the one who has stroked my hair dozens of times already, each gentle pass of his hand an attempt to give me something steady to cling to.

Now he’s on the phone with their parents, trying to calm them down even though he looks just as hollow as the rest of us.

Ethan has one arm wrapped tightly around Thalia, keeping her close, while holding his phone to his ear with the other. He’s talking to my parents because I can’t.

I can’t even form the words.

All I can do is cry and pray to God that Zayn will be okay.

“God,” I hear Theo say, frustration and panic bleeding into his voice. “Why is this taking so long?”