Close to him in a way I haven’t allowed myself to be.
Something caves inside me.
My hand lifts before I can think better of it, trembling as I gather the fabric. The weight of it is nothing, but it feels unbearably heavy in my chest the higher his scent makes it to my nose.
And the minute I inhale to ease my burning chest, it slams into me so hard my breath fractures.
My eyes burn. My throat closes.
For one aching second, it feels like he’s here—standing behind me, leaning close enough that his presence fills the room the way it used to fill my chest.
And my fingers curl tighter, as if holding the shirt is the only way to keep from falling apart.
But grief doesn’t care about boundaries, and my fingers won’t let go of the fabric even as my throat tightens around a sob I refuse to release.
I pull the shirt over my head anyway.
It swallows me, long enough to bridge the space between hips and hem that brushes the backs of my knees. The collar slips wide on my shoulder, the fabric brushing the line of my collarbone, the scent clouding my senses—him, memory, the gnawing sense of a life paused in the middle of a sentence.
I stand there for a long time. Just breathing. Just trying not to fall apart.
My reflection in the dark window looks like a ghost wearing a memory, and a quiet voice begs,
You don’t deserve this.
You’re sitting in his chair, wearing his clothes while he might be?—
I shut the thought down before it finishes.
I crawl onto the bed.
The mattress dips softly under my weight, the sheets cool but still smelling faintly of cedar, gunpowder, the warmth he wore like a second skin.
I lie in the center, afraid to slide to either side, as if the room might swallow me whole if I loosen even a fraction.
The room is too quiet. The bed too big. My grief too loud.
I pull the shirt up to my face and breathe, hard and slow, trying to anchor myself to a breath that won’t betray me.
There’s no comfort, not really—only longing, fear, a hollow ache carved into my ribs.
I stare at the ceiling as the shapes there drift in the corners of vision, like moths drawn to a flame that won’t go out.
Wide awake, the sheets don’t warm.
My heart doesn’t settle.
My mind won’t stop replaying Zay’s words:
He’s still in surgery.
Hours pass like that—silent, motionless, wide awake in the middle of Xavier King’s bed, wrapped in a shirt that still smells like him, wearing a crown I never asked for and praying to a god I don’t believe in that he comes back to reclaim it.
2
ISAIAH
The hospital waitingroom tastes like metal and antiseptic and sin.