ARIA'S POV
Hospitals have a way of stripping people bare.
The smell — antiseptic and fear. The harsh white lights that make everything too real. The waiting rooms where time stretches until your chest aches from holding your breath too long.
Lucas is in surgery.
Those words replay in my head like a sentence without an end.
My mother sits rigid in a plastic chair, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles have gone white. My father paces the length of the hallway, back and forth, back and forth, like if he stops moving everything might fall apart. Nurses pass by, murmuring softly, offering words that don’t land.
I sit between Dante and my mother, my hands shaking in my lap.
Dante hasn’t let go of me since we arrived.
His arm is around my shoulders, solid and warm and real, anchorin
