Nia

I thought the pain would kill me before Matteo ever could.

Not the gunshot, not the hospital machines that beeped like a cruel reminder that I wasn’t gone yet—but the silence. The silence in the room when the doctors left and the world outside went on, and I was left in a body that felt more like a prison than the locked rooms Matteo once kept me in.

Eleanor sat by the window, her head bent low, scrolling her phone like she was trying to outrun her own thoughts. Her presence was ...