A Bonus Story: ComfortNote: this bonus scene takes place between chapters 6 and 7, the first day after Colby’s released from the hospital.
Jason, watching Colby sleep, felt the unvoiced scream in his chest like a shattering of walls, like a collapse of barriers, like the breaking of a cliff’s edge—
No. No, not that. He refused to think it.
It had happened. That was undeniable.
But that was past tense. Colby was healing. Colby was here, released from the hospital the day before, tucked into bed in this hotel room.
Watery afternoon light drizzled and dripped along old windowpanes and eaves. One of Colby’s scarves stretched blue loops over a chair-back: alive, vibrant, caught mid-motion while flung hastily through the air. A flutter of rainbow sticky notes decorated a notebook, the room’
