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REED
“Will it hurt?”
Gabe’s eyes fluttered open, and he turned his head so he could see me, though it seemed like even just the little movement took the same amount of energy I would use during a whole soccer game.
He was always so tired now. Like, he was tired before, but since he’d made what my parents were callingthe decision, his eyes had become darker and his skin much paler. It's almost like I could see through it.
“Will what hurt?” he murmured, licking his dry lips.
I grabbed the glass of water from the tray over his bed and lifted it to his mouth, letting him take a few small sips before I put it down again. “Will it hurt when you die?”
“I don’t really know.”
I leaned in, bracing my elbows on the side of the bed. “Isn’t that scary?”
A small grin began to brighten his face. Gabe smiled a lot less now, so my heart skipped a little at the sight of his mouth curling upward. “I’m not really sure what dying will feel like. But one thing I know for sure is that this is not what living should feel like.”
I’d wondered for a long time exactly what my brother would have wanted living to feel like if he’d had a choice. If he hadn’t been locked up in a hospital for most of it, navigating surgeries and medications.
Would he have wanted it to be love.
His job, his house, the woman of his dreams.
Or would he have leaned more into experiences, like traveling the world, tasting foods, and seeing things and places that people often only experience once in a lifetime?
My parents would have hated it, but in my mind, Gabe would have been an adrenaline junkie. He would have been all about living life to the fullest, throwing himself out of planes and riding the tallest, scariest rollercoasters in the world.
He didn’t get the chance or the opportunity to pick a path.
So I decided a while ago that I was going to do all of them.
I was going to make sure I had experienced it all so when I got to see Gabe in the next life, I could tell him. I wanted him to feel like he hadn’t missed out. So I went, and I saw the Eiffel Tower and jumped out of a fucking plane.
I’d done all the crazy stuff.
And up until now, I’d been missing a few things.
But I knew soon I was going to be able to tell him what it felt like to fall in love.
“You should try and get some rest,” Valen urged as she sat down on the hard plastic hospital chair beside my bed before offering me a coffee that probably tasted like hell.
Exactly what I needed.
I took it and sat a little straighter, sucking in a sharp breath as I felt a pull at the stitches in my side. “I’m fine.”
She chuckled softly, leaning back into the chair with her eyebrows raised. “Yeah. You’re fine. Your leg is bouncing so much it’s shaking the entire third floor of the hospital.”
I grabbed my leg—the leg I hadn’t realized I was even moving—forcing it flat on the bed. I held it there, ignoring the smirk on Valen’s face as I sipped at the nasty fucking coffee.
I wanted out of here.
It’d been two days.
Two fucking days, and I swear I hadn’t slept for either of them.
The beeping sounds.
The footsteps that echoed down the hall drove me crazy.
