My chest felt empty, like something had reached in and taken everything solid and left nothing behind but the weight of whatever the fuck this was.
Sadie’s voice echoed in my head.
They’re trying to get in.
At the time, it hadn’t made sense. It had sounded like panic. Chaos.
Now it made sickening sense.
A bite.
Like the wound on Peter’s neck. Torn open. Still bleeding.
I saw Sadie in my mind the way she looked the last time I’d seen her—standing in the doorway of the lawyers’ office with her arms crossed, already halfway gone in ways that had nothing to do with distance.
If she’d been there when it started.
If she’d opened the door.
I swallowed hard.
She was gone.
The realization didn’t destroy me. There was no sharp moment of understanding, no sudden shock. It seeped in slowly, quietly, like water filling a room from the floor up, rising around me until I couldn’t breathe and didn’t know exactly when it had started.
I pressed my palms against the cold floor and pushed myself up, legs stiff and unsteady beneath me. The corridor seemed smaller now, the ceiling lower. The sounds of the aquarium systems were louder than before, or maybe I was just more aware of them now that everything else had gone still.
Sloane sat where she’d retreated, curled in on herself against the interior door. Her face was buried in her hands, shoulders shaking with sobs, not fighting it, simply giving in.
She looked small.
Smaller than I’d ever seen her. I’d seen her go toe-to-toe with sharks, shut down every smart-ass comment I’d ever thrown at her without breaking stride. She’d never looked like this.
Fragile.
I hesitated for a second, stood there like an idiot with my arms at my sides, not knowing what to do. Not knowing if she’d want me to do anything. We weren’t close. We weren’t friends. Most days we could barely stop from killing each other, if I were being honest.
But none of that mattered anymore; I crossed the space between us.
I lowered myself beside her, my back against the same door, and gently put my arm around her shoulders.
She stiffened immediately, but only for a second. A reflex—her whole body going rigid, as if she wasn’t used to being touched like that. Like she hadn’t expected it from me.
Then she broke completely.
She leaned into me suddenly, hands gripping the front of my shirt, fingers twisting into the fabric and holding on like I was the only solid thing left. Her face pressed into my chest, and the sobs came harder—raw, unfiltered, shaking her whole body and moving into mine.
I pulled her closer without thinking. My hand rested against her upper arm; she was trembling badly.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly.
It was a lie; nothing was okay. Nothing about any of this was, and we both knew it. But it was the only thing I had to give her, so I said it again.
“It’s okay.”
Her hair brushed against my jaw, soft and faintly damp. The scent of her shampoo filled my nose—clean. Floral. Ordinary. The kind of thing that belonged to a normal morning, a normal life, a world where people went to work and came home and did it all again the next day.
That world was gone.