“You told me to do this,” she says, wheezing with agonized laughter. “You told me if I wanted to be with Jules, I had to tell her the truth. And then she left. You knew she’d leave, like Héloïse did. You knew I’d chase her. You probably knew a fucking truck would fucking run me over. You know it all, don’t you?”

Santi is there, of course, beyond the twisted wreck of her bicycle, beyond the paramedics who buzz like orange flies at the edge of her narrowing vision. “Hold on,” he says.

“You were wrong,” she gasps at him. “This isn’t right. I’m not meant to die now. I’m meant to live, and love Jules, and raise Oskar, and drink tea and waste time and—oh, God, this hurts. Where’s Jules?”

“She’s coming, Thora, she’s got Oskar, just hold on.”

“Hold on,” she echoes. “That’s what I was trying to do.” The world is ebbing, flickering in and out like a guttering candle. “I don’t even get to say goodbye to them. How unfair is that?”

His voice shakes. “You’ll see them next time.”

“No, I won’t. She won’t be the same Jules—I won’t be the same Thora—Oskar won’t even exist—” It hurts to breathe, but she doesn’t want to let him have the last word. “You’d think I’d be used to dying by now. But it never stops being terrifying.”

He takes her hand, squeezes it hard. He’s crying, of course. He’ll always cry for her, and she’ll never cry for him. “I’ll look after them,” he says.

She laughs, even though it hurts more than she could have believed. “Fuck you,” she says, with all the sincerity she can muster. She understands now, the revelation coming to her in waves of pain: the choices she has made because of him, the ways her life has warped around him. “It’s you,” she spits. “You’re the problem. You’re what gets in the way.”

“Thora,” he says, hurt spilling out of him. “We’ll talk about this. I’ll find you, next time.”

The sirens wail like wild birds. Thora narrows herself to a point, pushes her lips to form the last thing she will say to him. “I never want to see you again.”

Never Means Never