The video is still open in front of him, paused and replayed, slowed, zoomed, broken apart and reconstructed in ways that shouldn’t be possible from such a short clip, but he keeps doing it anyway, like if he watches it enough times something will slip, something will reveal itself, something will give him a direction that isn’t empty. He doesn’t react to it anymore. Not visibly. He just keeps going, locked into it in a way that feels like the only thing holding him upright.
The hand.
The way she was lying there.
The stillness.
It’s there whether I look or not.
My hip aches.
It’s been building for hours, sitting under everything else at first, quiet enough to ignore, then louder, then impossible to push aside once everything else starts to wear thin. Normally I can work through it, push past it, let it sit in the backgroundwhile everything else takes priority, but today it feels like it’s feeding into everything else, threading through the tension, making it harder to stand still, harder to think, harder to stay present in a space where I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.
That’s the worst part.
Everyone else is moving.
Elijah is out there doing something, even if it’s brutal, even if it’s uncontrolled, even if it’s not leading anywhere yet.
Christian is organizing.
Lucian is directing.
Jackson is dissecting that video like it’s the only thing that matters.
And I’m here.
Standing in the middle of it with nothing to do, no direction to take, no way to help that doesn’t feel like I’m getting in the way.
“Zach.”
Jackson’s voice cuts through it, pulling me back just enough to register that he’s looking at me, his eyes sharper than they should be, like he hasn’t blinked properly in hours.
“They called again,” he says. “Coach. They want to know why we’re not at practice.”
The words sit there for a second without meaning anything. Practice feels like it belongs to a different life, something that exists in a version of reality that isn’t connected to this one.
I nod anyway, because it’s something to respond to, something that requires an answer even if it doesn’t matter.
“Tell them we’re not coming,” I say, my voice steady enough that it doesn’t betray how little I actually have behind it.
He watches me for a second longer than necessary, like he’s checking something, then looks back down at the screen without answering, the video starting again.
I don’t look at it.
I don’t need to.
I push away from the wall and move down the hallway without saying anything, the sound of the apartment dulling slightly the further I get from it, the noise of voices and movement fading into something quieter, something easier to ignore.
Her room is exactly the same.
Nothing has been touched.
Nothing has been moved.
The bed is still unmade, her things still where she left them, her scent still in the air in a way that settles around me the second I step inside, familiar enough that it makes something in my chest tighten before I can stop it.
I close the door behind me.
