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Taylor flinches, but he doesn’t back off. “Salem, please.”

“No. He was there. I wanted more time, but nobody fucking believed me, and now he’s gone.”

Before either of them can say another word, I step inside the elevator, choking on sobs that threaten to bubble up my throat.

The doors slide shut.

They don't try to stop me. They just let me go.

I hold myself together all the way through the hospital and out into the parking lot, only allowing myself to fall apart once I'm alone in my car with no one around to hear me break.

The scream that rips out of me is raw and guttural, clawing its way up from every version of me that’s ever loved him. I slam my fists against the steering wheel over and over until my knuckles throb and tears blur the world into meaningless shapes.

It’s not fair. None of this is fair.

He wanted me, and I let him slip away. I couldn't love him how he needed me to. Fuck, if I could just have one more chance, I'd try. God, I'd try.

But now he's gone, and so is everything inside of me that he loved.

All I have left are regrets and the ghost of a life we might’ve had.

And I'll never be the same.

Chapter

Forty-One

Logan

The one sound no kid ever wants to hear is their mother crying.

That’s what pulls me in again, like a riptide. I don’t see her, but I feel her press a kiss on my forehead, just like she used to do when she would tuck me in at night.

She’d also hum me to sleep. I hear it now, the melody floating through this in-between place, low and haunting.

My fingers twitch. I think. Maybe.

I try to call out, to tell her I’m still here, but my mouth won’t work. My body feels like it’s filled with wet cement, like I’ve been buried alive beneath all the words I never said.

I’m sorry. I love you. You’re still my mom, no matter what.

I see her face twisted in agony the day I left her on the front porch.

Then Dad cheering me on at every soccer match. He never missed a single one.

Both of them were always there for church recitals, school dances, graduations.

God, I want to go back. I want to fix everything.

Another voice joins Mom’s, deeper and heavier. Taylor. Then Christian. Then Devon.

I feel their hands. Their grief. Their goodbyes.

No, I scream inside myself. Not yet.

Why hasn’t Dad said anything? Why won’t he speak to me?

Where is my wife?