I paced the length of the room, then back again. Ten steps one way, eleven the other. Each turn scraped something rawer inside me. I’d been trained for crisis—bleeding, screaming, adrenaline. But this—this hush, this waiting—it was unbearable.
I braced my hands on the edge of the counter, head bowed. My reflection in the stainless steel backsplash looked wrecked. Eyes red. Lips cracked. A man unrecognizable even to himself.
My chest clenched. The separation papers wouldn’t stop flashing through my mind, those neatly formatted paragraphs, the polite legalese that tried to make disintegration sound civilized. They replayed on an endless loop, haunting me with their finality.
I almost signed them. Hell, Iwantedto sign them, if only to stop the bleeding between us. And the remorse. I’d convinced myself it was mercy. That maybe he’d be happier without me.
But now—watching him lie there, pale and still, machines breathing for him—I realized what I’d nearly done.
I almost lost him.
And the worst part? He’d been alive the whole time. No trauma. No blood. Just the slow, inexorable death of something we’d both once sworn was immortal.
Our marriage hadn’t exploded. It had eroded. Quietly. Gradually. Like the tide wearing down a rock until nothing remained but dust.
And I’d let it happen.
I thought of the way he used to smile when he was teasing me, the way he’d lean on the counter while I cooked, pretending to help. The way his voice softened every time he said my name.
And I thought about the last text I’d sent him—Don’t wait up—and how it read with the finality of a door closing.
My legs gave out. I sank into the chair as my breath gusted out of me, leaving me hollow.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please come back. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix everything.”
The sandwich sat untouched beside me. The clock ticked.
And I stayed there—blood-stained, exhausted, furious with myself—for ever believing love could survive without tending.
Chapter 12
The Sound Of You
ELI
Sound reached me first. Not all at once, just fragments. A beep, a whine, the soft scrape of a shoe across tile. Threads of something I almost recognized, the outline of a dream. A voice breaking on the edge of a prayer.
Then the world swelled and folded in on itself again. Darkness pressed close, dense and warm, like being underwater with no surface in sight.
Someone was speaking. No, not someone.Him.
“…come back to me. Please, baby. I’ll fix it. I’ll do better.”
The words stretched and bent, fading before I could catch them. I tried to move, to follow, but my limbs didn’t belong to me. Everything felt heavy and far away.
A sound escaped—maybe mine, maybe his.
The reel was gone now. This wasn’t a film; this was fog. Shifting light and noise. The hiss of machines, a distant beeping, the rhythm of something artificial keeping time for me.
Sometimes I thought I heard the low hum of a melody without words. Other times, it was his voice, close enough to reach out and touch.
“You hear me, Eli? You don’t get to leave yet.” A pause. A shaky breath. “I didn’t mean any of it. The isolation, the distance. You have to give me another chance.”
His warm hand clutched mine, slicing through the darkness. A tether. A pulse.
I wanted to answer. To tell him I was here, that I heard every word, that I never stopped. But my throat wouldn’t work. My body wouldn’t listen.
So I thought the words instead, hoping somehow, he’d catch them.I’m trying. I swear I’m trying.
