I squeeze his hand, gentle, careful of the wires.
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I admit, the confession cutting deep. “Valentina. She’s why I wasn’t with you. Why I didn’t answer my phone. Why you were alone when they came.”
My voice drops.
“She’s in my head, X. All the time. And I don’t know how to get her out.”
The ventilator hums. The monitors beep. Indifferent to my confession.
“Please don’t die thinking I chose someone else over you. Please don’t leave me with that—with knowing that the one time you needed me, I wasn’t there.”
I lean forward, resting my forehead against the back of his hand, breathing in the antiseptic smell of hospital sheets.
“If you wake up—when you wake up—I swear I’ll fix it. I’ll put her wherever you tell me. Ship her back, hand her over, whatever you want. I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”
My voice drops to barely a breath.
A promise. A prayer.
“Just don’t leave me, X. Please. Don’t let me be alone again.”
3
ASHER
The water runscold against my skin, and I don’t move to adjust it.
It’s been hours since the meeting ended—hours since I watched Valentina crumble and rebuild herself in the span of a single conversation, hours since I scrubbed Xavier’s blood off my hands only to find it still staining the creases of my knuckles, trapped in the whorls of my fingerprints like some kind of permanent mark.
The shower’s doing fuck-all to help.
The cold bites into my shoulders, my chest, my face, each droplet hitting like tiny needles, but it doesn’t wash away the image of Xavier on the ground, eyes glassy and unfocused, blood pooling beneath him like some kind of sick offering to whatever god watches over men like us.
I press my palms flat against the tile, the surface slick and frigid under my touch, head bowed, letting the water hammer down on the back of my neck.
The pressure builds and builds, a relentless assault that should hurt more than it does.
My muscles ache—a deep, bone-tired exhaustion that’s settled into every fiber of my being—but the physical pain is nothing compared to the shit storm in my head.
It’s the crack of dawn—maybe four, maybe five.
I stopped checking the clock after the second hour of staring at the ceiling, watching shadows crawl across the plaster as my mind runs in circles like a dog chasing its own tail.
Sleep is a joke.
Every time I close my eyes, I see it: the muzzle flash, the way Xavier’s body jerked backward, the spreading crimson stain that looked too bright, too wrong against his white shirt.
This is my fault.
The thought loops, vicious and unrelenting, a mantra I can’t escape.
My fault.
My fucking fault.
If I hadn’t been arguing with him about a fucking girl I have no business liking.
If I’d been standing behind him, like normal, instead of blocking the doors, forcing him to listen to me beg for him to be selfless, for once to share something. Anything, especially her.