And then Sydney was gone.

I was still trying to breathe, still trying to drag myself back into reality, but it wasn’t working.

I needed⁠—

I didn’t even know what I needed. I just knew it wasn’t this.

It wasn’t Sydney’s careful hands or her quiet sympathy. It wasn’t this unfamiliar bed, this unfamiliar room. It wasn’t this tightness in my chest, this goddamn ache in my ribs that wasn’t even physical.

It was Beverly.

It was the way she used to knock on my wall. The way she used to crawl into my bed without asking. The way she used to press her fingers against my wrist when I couldn’t breathe and whisper, “I’m here.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I didn’t really remember Sydney leaving.

I didn’t remember time passing at all.

I didn’t know if I had been alone for minutes or hours.

All I knew was the quiet.

The heavy, suffocating silence pressing against my skin.

The way my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I was still sitting on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands, still trying and failing to breathe like a normal person, still shaking as if my body didn’t know I wasn’t in that house anymore, when the mattress dipped beside me.

A familiar weight.

A scent I knew by heart.

“Blake?”

I flinched before I even processed it. I wasn’t sure if it was real. If my mind was just giving me what I wanted.

Warm fingers brushed against my wrist, hesitating for only a second before curling around mine. “Blake,” she whispered.

I lifted my head. Beverly’s blue eyes locked onto mine, sharp and wild and full of something I couldn’t name.

My throat closed.

Her hair was disheveled, her cheeks flushed, her breathing uneven—as if she had run to get here, as if she had sensed it before Sydney even said a word. She smelled like sunscreen and coconut, like every summer we ever had, like every memory I never let myself hold onto.

I let out a breath that wasn’t really a breath.

More like a shudder. A broken thing.

And suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t stop it.

The sob broke loose before I could even think to hold it back. My chest caved in on itself, and I was crying too hard to speak, my breath coming in sharp, broken gasps. “B,” I choked out.

Her arms slid around me, pulling me into her. My forehead rested against her shoulder as I sucked in a desperate breath. My fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt, gripping hard, too hard, but she didn’t pull away.

“Hey,” she murmured, her voice soft. “I’m here.”

A sharp, ragged sound tore out of my throat.