When the fog cleared it wasn’t relief that bloomed. Relief would have been easy, soft — a warm hand on my shoulder, a whispered, it’s okay. What rose up inside me was something hotter, harder: a flat, cold resolve that spread through my limbs until my hands felt like tools and not tremblers.
I sat on the edge of the hospital bed and felt the bruise under my ribs flare. Pain, I decided, was a detail. Details could be managed. Purpose couldn’t.
I didn’t think the world owed me second chances. I’d stolen one already — a lie of omission, the kind breath that keeps you afloat a while longer. But Max had been real. Max had been the only living thing that unfailingly loved me, who curled at my feet, who came when I called even at three in the morning. Reid had taken that away and left a hole in
