72. Blink And Gone
CHAPTER 72
BLINK AND GONE
NORA
My hands tremble as I stare at my phone. Seven missed calls echo like heartbeats in the void.
Each message sits there untouched, a timeline of mounting desperation:
Nora
Where are you?
Please just let me know you're safe.
Nate, you're scaring me.
I’m not letting you do this alone.
Please just answer.
I need to know you're okay.
The phone weighs like grief in my hands as I pace the balcony, fighting tears that threaten to break the dam of my composure. Each step feels like wading through memories of every time I've watched him walk away, my heart a desperate metronome counting seconds of silence. Camilla's approach registers in soft heel-clicks against stone, her presence cutting through the static of my panic.
"Hey," she says, voice gentle as morning light. "What's going on?"
My head shake sends the world tilting. "Nate's gone. He followed Scott out, and I can't—" The words fracture in my throat. "He's not in a good place."
"What happened?" Camilla moves closer, her usual sharp edges softened by concern.
"Scott and Lydia had a fight. Scott lunged at Lydia and—God, you should have seen Nate's face, Camilla." Another call hits voicemail, another crack in my resolve. "He won't answer, he won't??—"
"What about Jay?" Camilla's voice cuts through my spiral, practical as always. "He might know where Nate went."
"I don't have his number."
A hint of a smile plays at her lips as she pulls out her phone. "Lucky for you, I do."
I grab her phone, questions about that particular connection filed away for a less urgent moment. Each ring makes my pulse spike.
"Didn't think you'd call so soon," Jay answers, playful tone a jarring contrast to my racing heart.
"Jay, it's Nora." My words tumble out like scattered puzzle pieces. "I need your help. It's Nate."
His voice shifts instantly to steel. "What happened?"
I explain in fragments—the gala, Scott's ambush, the aftermath that hangs in the air like smoke. Jay's curse cuts through the static of my fear.
"I think I know where he went," he says, and relief floods my system. "If he followed Scott, he's probably at Furlo's. Meet me there."
"Thank you," I breathe, inadequate for the weight of my gratitude.
Camilla squeezes my arm. "Want company?"
I shake my head, already moving. "No. The fewer people, the better." I leave unspoken the ways this night could spiral into chaos.
Inside, I spot Ollie laughing with Mia, their joy a stark reminder of how quickly happiness can shatter. I snatch the Jeep keys, mind racing ahead to every possible scenario, each one darker than the last.
Please, I think as I run, let me reach him before the damage becomes irreparable.
"Nora!"
Jake's voice freezes me mid-stride. I turn to find him approaching, his expression a battlefield of frustration and raw need.
"Where are you going?" His tone is sharp but refined.
The keys bite into my palm. "I need to go."
"Where?" Each word lands like an accusation.
"To find Nate." His name hangs between us like smoke signals.
Jake steps closer, taking my hand. His palm is warm but wrong. "You don't need to follow him every time he goes rogue. Stay," he pleads, voice honey-sweet. "Stay here. With me."
I close my eyes, because some truths are easier to deliver in darkness. "Jake, I can't. I can't let him do this alone."
His jaw works beneath perfect skin. "Number seventeen on my list… it was to tell you how I feel." He looks up through those unfairly long lashes, the perfect Sullivan son with his perfectly wrong timing. "About you."
My chest aches with the familiar pain of inevitable heartbreak. "Jake, stop."
His fingers dig into my shoulders with desperate intensity. "Nora, I love you."
The words hit like shrapnel, and I feel the moment everything changes. "Jake, I… I can't do this with you now."
"Because you have feelings for him?"
"Because I love him." The truth explodes between us like fireworks. "And I have for a long time."
"You don't have a future with him. But you could have one with me. That's why I said yes to the position with Dad."
The words land like a slap. "You what?"
"I said yes because I wanted to build something for myself, for you??—"
"No." Rage erupts in my chest, volcanic and violent. "Don't you dare use me as a reason. You knew this would happen and you went along with it anyway." Seventeen years of protected silence shatters like fine china. "You're delusional if you think Scott cares about you, Jake. He wants pawns he can manipulate, and you fell right into his hands like the perfect little soldier you've always been."
"Why do you let Nate get in your head like this?" His voice rises with frustration.
I laugh, the sound sharp enough to draw blood. "You still don't see it. All Nate has ever done is protect you. Every time you were sent away, it was to protect you. From seeing your dad abuse your mom. Abuse him. Your brother gave up everything so you could have a childhood he never got."
The color drains from Jake's face, his perfect world cracking like thin ice. "You're lying."
"I wish I was." My voice softens despite my anger, because watching someone's reality implode isn't something you can do without feeling it. "Nate sacrificed himself so you could have what was stolen from him. And now, I have to go before we lose him completely."
I push past him, chest burning with fury and regret. In my rearview, Jake stands alone in the dark, shoulders curved inward like a wounded child discovering his castle was built on quicksand, and the brother he resented was his shield all along.
The highway stretches before me like an obsidian river, empty except for distant taillights burning like dying stars. My knuckles bleach white against the steering wheel as I hit redial again, each unanswered ring another nail in my chest.
My phone chimes, sharp as breaking glass.
Nate
I'm coming back now. I'm sorry.
Relief floods my system—and then.
Twin suns explode in my vision.
Headlights blazing on the wrong side of the road, bearing down like the eyes of a metallic beast. They say your life flashes before your eyes, but that's not quite right. Time fractures instead, each millisecond crystallizing with perfect clarity:
Blink.
Mom's perfume as she hugs me goodbye.
Blink.
Ollie teaching me to ride a bike, promising not to let go.
Blink.
Nate's smile across a crowded room when his eyes find mine.
Blink.
All the firsts I’ll never have.
Blink.
All the moments that were supposed to be mine.
They don't tell you it's not the big moments you see, it's the small ones—the quiet ones you didn't know were precious until they're about to be gone. It's the future you thought was guaranteed, slipping away like sand through an hourglass suddenly turned on its side.
The impact happens in slow motion.
My world implodes in a symphony of destruction. The hood crumples like paper, the sound of buckling metal so loud it becomes a physical thing, rattling my bones and rupturing the quiet night. The windshield splinters in slow motion—a spiderweb of cracks blooming outward before the whole thing dissolves into a thousand glittering daggers. They catch the streetlight as they hurtle toward me, beautiful and lethal, slicing skin and embedding themselves in my flesh.
The seatbelt locks, crushing into my ribcage with such force I swear I hear bones crack. My teeth clack together, the impact sending shockwaves through my skull as my head whips forward then back. The airbag explodes in my face like a bomb mixing with the taste of my own blood. The Jeep pirouettes, each rotation bringing new waves of agony as my body ragdolls against the constraints.
Blood pools hot and thick in my mouth. Each swallow brings the copper-salt tang of mortality. But underneath it all is the primal scent of fear—sharp and terrifying. It radiates from my pores, mingles with the blood and smoke, marking this moment as the line between before and after.
Consciousness slips away in pieces as voices pierce the fog.
"Oh, my God! Are they dead?" A woman's voice, brittle with terror.
"No. Fuck, it's you."
Male.
Familiar.
That cologne cutting through the wreckage—something expensive, tainted with guilty panic.
"Should we call an ambulance?"
"No. We need to go. Now."
“Do you know her?"
"Get in the car."
"We can't just leave her! She's still breathing."
"I said get in the fucking car now."
Footsteps crunch away on broken glass. I try to scream, to move, but my body has become a prison of twisted metal and shattered bone. The darkness creeps in, soft and seductive.
Through the kaleidoscope of broken glass and rising smoke, I see him. He’s running towards me in a halo of impossible warmth, wearing a smile that made monsters retreat and storms seem less scary.
"Dad?" The word escapes like a dying breath.
His voice cuts through clear as morning bells: It's okay, Leni. I've got you. I always got you. Hold on, a little longer okay? I love you.
His image dissolves like watercolors in rain, replaced by different eyes—hazel ones that contain entire universes. Nate's eyes, memorized like favorite poems, stare back at me.
The realization hits harder than the crash—this isn't how our story was supposed to end.
Not with unspoken words and half-finished promises.
Seconds.
That’s all it takes.
One choice.
One cosmic blink, and certainty dissolves into smoke.
Time doesn't just break—it fractures completely.
Before stands forever separated from after, the boundary marked not by a gentle line but by a jagged barrier of broken glass and scattered memories.
When death arrives, it brings no patience for bargaining. It watches the raw, animal desperation of someone seeing their future burn.
Death only laughs—cold and ancient—reminding that each heartbeat was merely borrowed, asking with cruel interest: What did you do with my generous loan?
It’s where the realization hits you: life isn't possessed but temporarily held, like a library book with its due date written in vanishing ink. No one belongs to another forever. The universe simply allows brief custody, its permission already fading as it's granted.
These are the moments that transform.
That demolish and reconstruct something entirely different—something permanently marked by the knowledge that everything changes between inhale and exhale.
Seconds.
That’s all it takes.
Blink.
Gone.
Only darkness remains, with echoes of words forever unspoken.