You told me I wasn't going to be without you again. You were right. Even when I'm not beside you, you're in here. You're not coming out.
I think about his hands on my spine on the dock. The way he rubbed slow circles through the blanket until my breathing evened out. The way he always knows when to speak and when to just be there. The way his shirt smells like cedar and I was just wearing it and now I’m about to walk out of this house and maybe never—
I can't think about that.
I'm reaching for you right now and you're not here and that's the thing that's making me brave enough to do this.
I'm standing up now.
The third letter is the shortest. And the hardest.
My hand won't stop shaking. The tears are falling faster—I can feel them on my jaw, my chin, dropping onto the desk beside the paper. I don't wipe them. There's no point.
Zero—
You told me I was yours. You were right. I have been since the beginning.
I think about him carrying me to the pond on his shoulder. Grabbing a beer without setting me down. The grin I could hear in his voice. And then the dock—his hand reaching for me, his fingers slipping, his face when I came up from the water. The guilt that's been sitting in his bond for days like a bruise he won't let heal.
If Zero knew what I was planning, he'd lock me in his room and stand in front of the door until sunrise. He'd argue, threaten,beg—in that order—and when none of it worked he'd pick me up and carry me back to bed the way he carried me to the pond and he'd hold me there with his body until I stopped trying to leave. That's who he is. That's who I love.
I love you. I love the way you defended Wren at the dinner table like she was already yours to protect. I love that you negotiated forty minutes with your brother like I was the last good thing on earth and you couldn't stand to share me. I love the sound you make when you laugh and mean it, which is almost never, which is why I keep count.
Another tear hits the page. Then another. The ink is running in places. I don't care.
Don't follow me.
I almost laugh writing it. He's going to follow me. Of course he's going to follow me.
The nine people in that building don't have a Zero. They don't have an Atlas or a Bane. They have me. My voice. My name on a report.
That's all.
I set the pen down. My hands are trembling so badly I can barely fold the paper. The creases come out crooked. I think about refolding them—Atlas would refold them, Atlas would make them sharp and precise—but I don't. Let them be crooked. Let them be real. Let the tear stains and the shaking handwriting and the crooked folds say what the words can't: that I am terrified and I am doing it anyway.
I look in the mirror. The person looking back at me is not the boy who showed up at this house with two duffel bags and a bottle of pills and a plan to be invisible. That boy would never have written those letters. That boy would never have walked toward the thing that scares him.
I pick up my keys from the desk.
The hallway is dark. Margot and Richard's door is closed at the far end—a thin line of dark underneath, both of them asleep. The brothers' doors are closer. Atlas. Bane. Zero. Three doors, three gaps underneath.
I kneel at Atlas's door first. Slide the letter through. The paper whispers against the hardwood and disappears under the gap. Gone.
Bane's door. The letter goes under. I press my fingers against the wood for a second—just a second—and the bond between us pulses once. Warm. Steady. I pull my hand back.
Zero's door. I slide the letter under and I swear I hear something on the other side—a shift, a breath, the creak of a mattress—but nothing follows. I wait three heartbeats. Nothing.
I stand. I go downstairs. Past Margot's bags. Past the foyer lamp. Through the front door, which I open slowly, holding the handle turned so the latch doesn't click.
The night air hits me and I almost stop.
The gravel is loud under my shoes. Every step sounds like an announcement—he's leaving, he's leaving, someone stop him—but nobody stops me. The car is parked where I left it, at thefar end of the drive near the hedges, and I walk toward it with my keys in my hand and the bonds pulling at my back like three hands trying to hold me by the shirt.
I reach the car.
I don't open the door. Not yet. I stand there with my fingers on the handle and the metal cold under my grip and I let myself feel it—the full weight of what I'm about to do.
Nine people in a concrete building. Nine people who don't have an Atlas to build a case. Who don't have a Bane to walk through the door. Who don't have a Zero to kill for them. They have me. My name. My voice. The thing that was done to my body in a room I still see when I close my eyes.
