The sunlight hit me first. Sharp, unrelenting, cutting across my face through the blinds. I groaned and rolled over, trying to keep the day at bay, trying to ignore the weight in my chest. But I couldn’t.
The flashes started the second my eyes opened.
They weren’t gentle, like yesterday. They hit hard—Dane’s laugh, a guitar leaned against some unfamiliar doorframe, a song humming through a kitchen I couldn’t place—someone tracing letters on fogged glass. Everything wrong, everything impossible, and yet so achingly familiar.
My stomach tightened. My throat closed up. My head wanted to throw up fragments I didn’t understand.
Dominic stirred beside me, one eye cracking open. “Morning,” he said, voice hoarse, low.
I didn’t answer right away. I just stared at the ceiling, listening to my h
