Chapter 2
The Last Day
ELI
The last morning of my life began the same as too many others—waking up alone in a cold, empty bed. Adrian was already halfway out the door, coffee in one hand, phone in the other.
“Morning,” I said softly, like I was testing whether it still meant anything.
“Mm,” he answered without looking up, thumb scrolling.
I tried again. “You’ve got a conference today?”
“Just rounds.” He checked his watch instead of me. “I’m late.”
That was it. No kiss. No teasing about my cooking. No us.
“Right,” I muttered, staring at the two plates I’d set out, eggs cooling on both. “Don’t let me keep you.”
He must’ve heard the edge in my voice because he finally looked up, a fleeting glance laced with guilt, and pressed his mouth to my cheek. Not a kiss, exactly. A brush of obligation.
“Don’t wait up,” he said, already halfway to the door.
The lock clicked shut behind him, the silence that followed echoing louder than any slam could.
I stood there for a long time, staring at the space he left behind, trying to remember when goodbye had started to feel like relief.
The eggs went rubbery. The coffee cooled. Something inside me had gone quiet, and it just sat there, stretching me thin from the inside out.
I should’ve been used to it by now—this vacant version of him, always rushing, always somewhere else. But every morning I still hoped he’d sit down, eat with me, ask about my plans like he used to.
Instead, it was just me and the empty chair across the table.
I stared at the wood grain as if it might open and give me back the version of him who used to linger, who used to kiss me goodbye.
The quiet pressed in until I couldn’t stand it.
The refrigerator hummed as if it had something to say, and the clock above the microwave ticked in steady accusation.
The isolation was suffocating. I grabbed my keys just to escape the grating disappointment of it all.
Groceries. Errands. Anything to fill the loneliness of my day, anything to outrun the echo of that lock.
The fridge was nearly empty—just a half carton of eggs, leftovers from the dinner I cooked last night that went uneaten, and milk that had soured days ago. I sighed, grabbed my jacket, and headed for the grocery store.
The automatic doors whooshed open in greeting. For a moment, it felt like relief. Rows of fruit, bright and ordered, people pushing carts, chattering on phones—it was all so ordinary, so simple, compared to the mess of my house, of my marriage.
I tossed things into the cart—cereal, bread, milk, the frozen dinners Adrian used to laugh at before he got too busy to laugh with me at all. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out too fast, heart stupidly leaping, only to see a reminder email about my car insurance.
“Did you find everything okay?” The cashier asked as she scanned items, her tone polite but distant.
“Yeah,” I said, though my voice cracked like the lie it was. I forced a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.
She bagged the groceries without conversation, and I imagined Adrian once teasing me for always double-bagging, for worrying the handles would snap. He hadn’t teased me in months.
Back in the car, I rested my forehead against the steering wheel for a beat before starting the engine. The errands blurred after that—pharmacy, post office, gas station—but through it all ran the same loop in my head: He didn’t even look at me this morning. Didn’t even say goodbye.
By the time I lugged the bags inside, the house felt colder, emptier than when I left. I set everything on the counter with more force than necessary, the thud of cans against wood sounding far too loud in the quiet.
That’s when my phone buzzed again. This time it was him.
Someone called out. I’m covering for them. Don’t wait up.
Three sentences, and my day was ruined. I stared at the screen until it blurred. Then I shoved the phone down, grabbed my jacket, and slammed out the door.
Winter had come early that year, a weather that swallowed the day whole before you realized it was gone.
It was barely five o’clock and already dark, the temperature falling fast. The cold bit through glass, through skin.
An iciness that made everything quiet. It settled over me the same way it had over the town, heavy and uninvited.
The car felt confining once I slid inside, the air stale with the faint scent of old coffee and Adrian’s cologne still clinging to the upholstery. I turned the key anyway, desperate for motion, for noise. The radio sputtered to life mid-chorus, drums pounding so hard they rattled the windows.
I drove for what felt like hours, though it was barely twenty minutes.
Streetlights blurred into streaks. The world outside rushed past in pieces—neon signs, brake lights glowing like angry eyes, rain starting to bead across the windshield.
My hands tightened on the wheel, knuckles bone-white, and I pressed the gas harder than I needed to.
The music poured through me, a wall of sound that drowned out the hush Adrian had left behind. I sang until my throat burned, until my voice broke, until it almost felt like I could scream the ache out of me.
But even over the guitars, even over my raw voice, the memory of his text cut sharp as glass. Don’t wait up.
After twelve years together, I was an afterthought. Less significant than a piece of furniture left at the curb on move-out day.
I told myself I was just going for food, just trying to shake the mood. Why should I cook if there is no one to share it with? But the truth was much sadder than that. I was running from the ghosts of that house, from the memory of a marriage I wasn’t sure was even alive anymore.
When my phone buzzed again on the passenger seat, my pulse leaped, hope and fury tangling like barbed wire.
But it wasn’t him.
Daniel Shaw of Beatty, Shaw, and Faulkner. The firm I’d reached out to weeks ago when things started to fracture, when I still believed legal language could somehow contain heartbreak.
Mr. Hawke—
We’ve finalized the separation agreement and are awaiting your confirmation to proceed. Please let us know when you’re available to discuss signing and next steps.
Next steps.
The phrase sat there on the screen, polite and devastating, like being told to move on from something that hadn’t even finished breaking.
My throat closed. The road in front of me blurred. I tried to take deep, calming breaths, but all I could see were the signatures—his and mine—side by side on a document that turned love into logistics.
The phone slid from my lap, hitting the floor mat with a dull thud.
I blinked. Once. Twice. The light ahead swelled too fast.
Headlights brighter than anything I’d ever seen erupted from the oncoming lane, bleaching the world white.
A horn blared, sharp and monstrous, shattering through the music still pounding through the speakers.
I gasped—half word, half plea—his name ripped from somewhere deep in me.
The tires screamed. The world tilted. Glass exploded, tiny stars raining through the air that sliced through my flesh like razor blades. The seatbelt cut through my shoulder a half second before the airbag punched through my chest, a brutal hit that knocked the wind out of me.
And then—nothing.
No light, no sound.
Just the echo of his name in the dark.
Darkness swallowed everything. Not the soft kind that comes before sleep, but jagged and absolute, like ink flooding the world, thick and suffocating.
It pressed in on me, smothering sound, stealing air.
For a heartbeat, I thought maybe this was it—that final, empty nothingness everyone fears but never speaks of.
But then it shifted.
Shadows rippled like water, folding in on themselves. Colors I couldn’t name flickered and vanished. A low hum vibrated through me, as though the world itself was winding down.
The low hum deepened until something sharper swallowed it. White-hot, otherworldly pain wrapped around every cell in my broken body. I felt it vibrate through my bones, felt my body stiffen, then falter.
A chemical antiseptic invaded my nose. A brightness that wasn’t light so much as pain seared behind my eyelids. The muffled roar of voices, urgent, overlapping, screamed in my ears.
“BP’s dropping—”
“Get a line in—move, move—”
And then one voice cut through it all, shattering the static.
“Eli.”
Adrian.
I forced my eyes open to see him right above me, face pale, eyes wild, his hands gripping mine with enough strength to anchor me by sheer will.
I clung to his hand, or thought I did, my fingers twitching against his.
I wanted to beg, to tell him I wasn’t ready, that I couldn’t leave him like this, but my tongue was heavy, my lungs locked.
The harder I tried to hold on, the faster the world slipped from me.
“Hold on,” he pleaded, leaning close, his voice raw in a way I’d never heard. “Stay with me. Do you hear me? Stay.”
Adrian’s face loomed above me, his mouth moving, eyes wide, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. Not really. His voice came through warped, muffled, filtered through water.
The world stuttered and blurred around the edges. Cold flooded my veins. My body didn’t feel like mine anymore, ravaged by pain and sensations I couldn’t name. But his voice—that tether—dragged me back, one agonizing beat at a time.
And then everything lurched sideways, alarms screaming. His grip tightened, desperate, as if he could fight the inevitable. The flatline screamed, a sound I felt more than heard, slicing straight through me. My body went slack, but my mind, God, my mind wouldn’t stop.
The sterile light overhead shattered into pieces, fragments scattering into the dark. Adrian’s outline broke apart too, dissolving at the edges until he was gone, and all I had left was the sound of his name pounding in my skull.
Adrian.
Adrian.
And then—silence.
The darkness splintered, a grainy sepia-toned light bleeding through.
Adrian once told me that the brain stays alive for up to seven minutes after you die.
I guess he was right because here I am, still thinking of him—still chasing the sound of his voice through the dark, still hoping seven minutes is long enough to find my way back to the light.
Back to him.