Then—halfway through the book—the handwriting shifts. Still elegant, but looser. The pressure lightens, the strokes wandering. He’s slipping. The man who never crosses out a word starts to hesitate.
And then I find it.
A page that doesn’t follow the pattern.
No numbered entries. No rewards.
Just a title—underlined twice.
Little Miss Take
The rest is verse. Terza rima. The pattern is unmistakable—he’s building a chain of rhyme and reason, trying to bind the world into order again.
I built you from the syllables of grace,
From pulse and ink and quiet disobedience.
You moved—my universe adjusted place.
Each breath a claim, each silence a convenience?—
You taught me mercy, ruined every plan.
Control was just a myth of self-reliance.
If you return, I’ll write the rest, I swear.
Each line a breath, each breath a kind of prayer.
That’s where it stops. Mid-pattern.
As if he couldn’t finish without me.
My chest tightens.
He made me a ledger.
A ledger of faith.
Even his love obeys a form. Even his fear rhymes.
Reward: 500 points for the first natural breath after extubation. I’ve never heard anything so beautiful.
Reward: 30,000 points for opening your eyes. You looked at me. You’re still here.
My vision blurs. Must be the concussion.
“He was here the whole time?” I ask, voice still sandpaper.
The nurse nods, fluffing my pillow with unnecessary enthusiasm. “Six days straight. Wouldn’t leave that chair except when they made him. Just sat there, writing in those books,talking to you. Threatened to buy the hospital when they enforced visiting hours.”
I blink. “What did he say? When he talked to me?”
She gives me that conspiratorial nurse look—half pity, half privilege. “That’s between you two, honey. But he only left after you opened your eyes this morning. Said he had business to take care of.”
Business. Right.
The kind that involves cleaning up after shooting your cousin in the head.