Chapter 52
SLOANE
Nate slept for a long time after he woke in the hospital. Not the deep, easy sleep people talked about. It was heavy and guarded, the kind that still flinched at noises.
I sat closer to the bed and kept my hand on Nate’s. His skin was warmer now. Less gray.
The oxygen tubing curved under his nose. His lips were still split and swollen, but he wasn’t strapped to a machine anymore. His body was doing the work on its own.
I hated how grateful I felt for something so basic. I watched him breathe until the rhythm hypnotized me. Until the dread eased enough for the memories to find a crack and push through.
The last time he’d been fully awake in front of me.
The last time he’d said my name with his whole voice.
The last time I’d watched him walk away.
My fingers tightened around his.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, even though he couldn’t hear me. Or maybe he could. I didn’t know what people heard when they were buried under drugs, exhaustion, and pain, but I couldn’t keep the words trapped in my chest anymore.
I blinked fast, because I didn’t want to cry again. I was tired of crying. Tired of my body acting like it could purge almost three years of grief and call it progress.
Nate’s brow twitched.
I froze.
His lashes fluttered like he was fighting his way up through glue.
“Nate?” My voice came out too soft, too scared.
His eyes opened halfway. For a second, he didn’t see me. He looked at the ceiling. The IV pole. The shadowed corner. My heart clenched.
His gaze slid to me. He didn’t jerk away this time. He simply stared at me, quiet and unmoving, as if he was checking if I was real again.
I leaned in slowly so I wouldn’t startle him. “Hey.”
He swallowed like it hurt.
“Water?” I asked. “Do you want water?”
He looked at the cup on the tray and then back at me. He gave the smallest nod.
I grabbed the cup and helped him sip through the straw the way the nurse had shown me. He coughed once, then settled again, breathing carefully.
I set the cup down and wiped his mouth with the edge of a tissue.
“Better?” I whispered.
His voice came out rough. “Starlight?”
The word hit me so hard I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Yeah,” I managed. “Yeah, baby. Starlight.”
He searched my face. “Roof.”
I swallowed hard. “Roof.”
He blinked, slowly. The panic that had lived on his expression earlier wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t driving him anymore. He was exhausted. Wrecked. But he was still here with me, and he was reaching for us.
I shifted my chair closer, careful of the lines hooked up to the machines. “Do you know where you are?”
He looked around the room again. He swallowed. “Hospital.”
“St. Vincent Hospital. You’re safe.”
His mouth twitched at that, like the word safe didn’t fit right in his mind.
“I’m here.” I needed him to hear that more than anything. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His fingers flexed, and I slid my hand into his again. He held on.
I stared at his hand and realized something I hadn’t let myself digest yet. He was alive. My brother was alive. My eyes flooded again.
His expression filled with worry. “Slo.”
I wiped my cheek fast, annoyed at myself. “I’m okay.”
He didn’t believe me. Even when we were kids, he could see through my lies as if they were made of glass. This time the tears gave me away.
He kept watching me. “You didn’t sleep.”
I tried to smile, but it didn’t work very well. “I did.”
He lifted his eyebrows, a weak version of the look he used to give me when I tried to pretend that I wasn’t angry.
I choked out a breath that might have sounded like a laugh. “I slept in a chair.”
Nate glanced at our hands. “You stayed.”
“Yeah. I stayed.”
His eyes shut briefly. When they opened again, they looked damp, and my heart folded in on itself. The silence stretched between us.
There was so much inside it. Nearly three years of unanswered calls.
Three years of showing his picture to strangers.
Three years of waking up and remembering all over again that he was missing.
I didn’t know how to fit all of that into words without crushing him under it.
But I didn’t get to avoid the one thing that had been rotting inside me since the night he disappeared.
I swallowed hard. “Nate … can I say something?”
His gaze held mine, and he nodded.
My hands started shaking. I hated it. I fucking hated my body for betraying me when I needed to be steady.
“I need you to hear me. Because I’ve been carrying it, and I don’t want to carry it anymore.” It was the best excuse I had. What I couldn’t say was the truth—that I needed to tell him this in case I lost him again.
He looked at me, confused. “What?”
I stared at him and felt guilt rise so fast it made me dizzy.
“That night,” I said, voice breaking. “The last night. When you came back to the door after I told you to leave.”
Nate went still, but I kept going before I could lose my nerve.
“I didn’t open it,” I whispered.
He looked at me, searching for the point of the sentence.
“I heard you.” Tears blurred my vision again. “I was right there. Two feet away. And I didn’t fucking open it.”
He didn’t speak.
“I thought if I opened it, you’d pull me into whatever you were in,” I said, the confession tumbling out. “I thought if I let you in, I’d make it real. I thought you’d ask me to cover for you, and I didn’t know how to … I didn’t know how to keep you safe. And I was so mad at you.”
Nate blinked slowly.
I forced myself to say the part that made me hate myself. “I threatened you. I threatened to call. I said I’d call your probation officer. I used it against you.”
Pain flashed across his face.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do, and I—”
“Slo,” Nate rasped.
I stopped, my leg bouncing uncontrollably.
His voice was still rough, but it was him. It was his cadence. His stubborn gentleness.
“You were trying,” he said.
I bit my lip before I spoke. “I was hurting you.”
“You were trying to save me,” he said again, a little firmer.
Tears slid down my cheeks, but I didn’t bother wiping them this time.
Nate’s hand shifted, but he managed to tighten his fingers around mine. “I knocked.” He looked away for a second. “I knew you were there.”
A sob tore out of me. “I know. I know. And I didn’t fucking move. I’ve hated myself for it ever since.”
“They would’ve taken me anyway.”
The sentence landed like a weight dropping into the room.
I shook my head. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” he whispered, and his eyes sharpened with something that wasn’t fear. Something wiser. “I do.”
“Nate—”
“It wasn’t about the door.”
I froze.
His breathing picked up slightly, like even saying this cost him. He looked at the window, unfocused, then back at me. “That night was … the end regardless of what you’d done.”
My pulse spiked. “End of what?”
He swallowed. His eyes fluttered with exhaustion. “It started before.”
“I don’t understand. When? In college?” I whispered. “How did you even get there? We didn’t have—”
He gave the smallest nod. “Scholarship. Foster youth program. I thought I’d mentioned it.”
My heart tripped over itself. “I knew it,” I whispered, more to myself than him. “I knew something was off.”
Nate’s mouth tightened. His shame surfaced there, quiet and familiar. “I didn’t want you to look at me different.”
“I never—”
“I know,” he interrupted gently, and it sounded like him, even now. Like the Nate who used to read me and know what I couldn’t say. “But I did.”
I squeezed his hand. “Tell me what you can. Only what you can.”
His breathing stuttered once. “It was people. Friends. Not friends. I don’t know.”
“The wrong damn crowd,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said sleepily, still fighting the sedation. “I thought I’d handled it.”
Sharp anger flared, and I shoved it down because it wasn’t for him. It wasn’t for this room. It was for the sons of bitches who had taken him.
Nate shifted slightly, and the blanket slid down his forearm.
My attention dropped automatically. There, on the top of his lower arm, was the mark.
The rabbit.
Small. Clean. Permanent. Exactly like Ryker’s.
My breath caught in my chest.
Nate followed my gaze, and his expression went distant again. A flicker of fear crossed his face.
I forced myself not to touch it.
My voice came out tight. “Do you remember when you got that?”
He stared at the ceiling for a beat, like he was trying to decide if answering would hurt him. “A little.”
My heart hammered. I kept my voice gentle. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me right now.”
He blinked slowly before his voice dropped, rough with fatigue. “Slo … it wasn’t … random.”
“I know.”
His fingers tightened around mine again, and he pulled a breath that seemed to cost him.
Nate stared at me for a long moment before he said the second truth. The one that made my blood run cold.
My palms grew sweaty, and I wiped them on my jeans.
I stared at my brother and felt the truth settle into place with brutal clarity.
I already knew Hamilton was real. Ryker’s parents had made sure of that.
Ryker had made sure of that. What I didn’t know was that Hamilton’s reach extended this far.
To Nate. Into a place where a man could be chained to a wall and reduced to a file.
A name like that didn’t echo unless it was anchored to something. And now it was anchored to my brother.
Nate’s eyelids drooped again, his body losing the fight to stay awake.
I leaned forward, pressing my forehead gently to his knuckles.
“Starlight,” I whispered.
His grip softened, but he held on long enough to whisper back, barely audible, “Starlight.”
Then his eyes slid closed.
The monitor beeped steadily.
And I sat there, holding his hand, staring at the rabbit mark on his lower arm, hearing one name echo in my skull until it felt carved into my bones.
Hamilton.