Eli had learned, very early in life, how to be the one who stayed.
It wasn’t heroic. It wasn’t noble. It wasn’t something people praised.
It was simply necessary.
Someone had to stay when people left.
Someone had to sit in the quiet after everything loud and destructive passed through and broke things it never bothered to fix.
That someone had always been Eli.
He sat in the narrow chair beside Ari’s couch, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. Ari had finally fallen asleep sometime after dawn, exhaustion dragging him under in a way that looked less like rest and more like collapse.
His face was too pale. Too sharp.
The lines of his collarbones were stark beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, ribs faintly visible when he breathed in. Even in sleep, his brow creased, like his
