Chapter 18
ANTHONY
The room was too white. White walls. White sheets. White light humming overhead that never dimmed enough to feel like night. It smelled like antiseptic and plastic and something faintly sweet that I couldn’t place.
It made my stomach turn.
Elliot lay still in the bed, too still, like the world had finally gone quiet enough for him to vanish inside it.
White sheets. White walls. White light that never dimmed enough to feel like night.
A thin tube ran beneath his nose. A clear line disappeared into the skin of his arm.
Machines whispered and clicked beside him, translating his existence into numbers.
I sat in the chair beside the bed with my hands locked together so tightly my knuckles had gone pale. I couldn’t stop shaking. Not violently. Not obviously. Just a constant, fine tremor under my skin—like my body had forgotten how to be still.
His chest rose as I watched. Fell. Rose again. Each breath felt like permission. Each breath felt borrowed. I leaned forward until my elbows rested on my knees, staring at him like if I looked away he might stop.
“I did this,” I whispered. The words dropped into the space between us and went nowhere. “I did this to you.”
My throat burned. My eyes felt dry and swollen at the same time, like they couldn’t decide whether to cry or not. My chest hurt in a way that didn’t feel physical. It was pressure, and heat, and something corrosive all at once—like guilt had teeth and was chewing its way through me from the inside.
“You trusted me,” I murmured. “You trusted me with your body. With your heart. With your grief.” My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “And I still broke you.”
A nurse came in quietly, adjusted a line, checked his vitals, and smiled at me the way people do when they don’t know what to say but want to acknowledge that you’re suffering.
“He’s stable,” she said gently. “He’s just very exhausted. His body went through a lot.”
All I could manage was a pathetic nod. I couldn’t make myself speak. When she left, the room felt even smaller.
Time stretched and folded in on itself. Nurses came and went. A doctor explained things I already half knew—hypothermia, shock, exhaustion, dehydration. They said words like rest and monitor and time like time was something that could fix this.
I told them I was his emergency contact when he was brought in. The words left my mouth before I’d even thought about them.
“I’m his emergency contact,” I said when they asked.
They wrote it down without question. I didn’t call David. Not because I wanted to hurt him. Because I couldn’t bear to explain. I couldn’t bear to hear his voice say Elliot’s name like he still had a claim on him.
I was the one who had been here when Elliot stopped wanting to be. That made him mine. Not his. He’d washed his hand of the most precious person in his life like he was nothing.
My phone buzzed against my thigh. The sound startled me so badly I flinched. I hadn’t moved in hours. The screen lit up with Thomas’s name. My chest tightened. I answered without standing up.
“Where are you?” he asked immediately. No preamble. “I went by your place. Your truck’s not there. You’re not answering texts.”
“I’m at County General,” I said.
There was a pause. I could hear him breathing on the other end. “Why?”
“H-he jumped off the cliffs. Tried to kill himself.” The words still didn’t feel like they belonged to me.
A sharp inhale. A quiet curse. “I’m coming,” Thomas said.
He arrived less than an hour later. When he stormed through the door he didn’t say anything—just crossed the room and pulled me into his arms.
I let him. I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding myself together until his hands pressed into my back and something in me finally slipped loose. My breath broke against his shoulder.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I said into his shirt.
He held me for one second longer than he needed to. Then he pulled back. His eyes went to Elliot first. The bed. The machines. The lines running into him. The way his chest barely moved.
“This,” Thomas said. “This is what I was afraid of.” It wasn't an accusation. It was grief. That was worse.
My spine stiffened anyway. “What does that mean?”
“It means I warned you,” he said. “I told you getting this close would hurt him.”
My chest tightened like a hand had closed around it. “I didn’t do this.”
“I know,” he said. “You didn’t push him. You didn’t cause the fall.” His gaze stayed on Elliot. “But you became the thing he holds onto when everything else has gone dark.”
“I was all he had.”
“That’s the problem.”
I shook my head. “No. The problem is everyone else left.”
“That’s not a problem for you to fix. You can’t replace his parents.”
“I wasn’t trying to replace anyone.” My voice cracked. “I was trying to love him.”
Thomas looked at me then. Really looked. “That’s not love,” he said gently. “That’s trauma attachment.”
The words didn’t strike. They sank. Like something heavy dropped into my stomach. Heat rushed up my throat, anyway. My pulse jumped—fast and wrong. “What?” I said.
“If you trusted what you feel,” he said, “you wouldn’t keep pulling away when it starts to matter. But you do. And he feels that.”
The room didn’t move. I did. Something inside me tipped, just slightly—like a floor shifting a fraction of an inch. My fingers curled into the chair without me noticing.
“I don’t think I deserve something as pure as him,” I said. “But I can’t leave him.”
“My point exactly.”
Something sharp rose in my throat. “Why don’t you just fuck off.”
His eyes flicked up. “Careful.”
I didn’t soften.
“You care about him,” he said. “I see that. But you also have unresolved shit, Anthony. And that makes this dangerous.”
“He’s grieving,” I said. “He lost everything.”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “And he’s fragile. And right now, you are the only place he feels safe.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“No,” he said. “But it is a risk.”
He sat down, his gaze moving back to Elliot. The bandages. The monitors. The stillness. “You can’t convince me those were just from the fall.”
My stomach dropped. “I tried to help him.”
“I know.” His voice softened. “But he needs more than you. And so do you.”
Elliot stirred then. Just a twitch of his fingers. A weak, searching lift. I was at his side before I realized I’d moved.
“Hey,” I whispered. “I’m here.”
His hand brushed the blanket. Missed mine by a New York Mile. My chest ached with it.
Thomas watched closely. “That’s what I mean.”
“Don’t talk about him like that.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m talking about you.”
“You weren’t here,” I said. “You didn’t see him disappear piece by piece.”
“That doesn’t make you his only oxygen.”
“But I am.” The truth of it scared me as much as I needed it.
“That’s not love,” Thomas said quietly. “That’s possession.”
Something in me snapped loose. I crossed the room and shoved him back against the wall before the thought finished forming. “Don’t you say that about me.”
A nurse was suddenly there between us. Hands raised to keep us apart, voice firm. “Sir. You need to step back. Now.”
I let go of him like I’d been burned. The room went very still as the nurse nodded at us then left. Thomas straightened his shirt. His anger had burned down into something smaller and heavier.
“I’m not angry because I hate you,” he said. “I’m angry because I’m scared you’re destroying yourself trying to save him.”
I turned back to Elliot, my hands gripping the sheets. “I already have.”
Thomas sat beside me, but we didn’t speak. The room held itself together around us—the soft electrical hum of the monitor, the faint hiss of oxygen, the quiet rise and fall of Elliot’s chest. Each sound felt too loud and not loud enough at the same time. Proof of life. Proof of how fragile it was.
My hands were still tangled in the sheets. I hadn’t realized I’d been gripping them until my fingers started to ache. I loosened them slowly. The fabric stayed wrinkled like a reminder of my guilt.
Elliot’s breathing stuttered once—just a hitch—and my whole body leaned toward it instinctively, like something in me was tuned to the smallest change in him. When his breath smoothed again, I exhaled with it. I hadn’t noticed I’d been holding mine.
Thomas watched that happen. He didn’t say anything. I think that hurt more. Because there was nothing left to argue with in silence. Just what was.
Just me sitting there, bent around a boy who barely knew I existed and needed me anyway. Just the shape of what I had become.
I reached out and brushed my knuckles lightly against Elliot’s hair. The touch was barely there—more intention than pressure—like I was afraid of imprinting myself on him too deeply.
His brow smoothed. That was all it took. One imperceptible touch.
My throat closed. I looked down at him and tried to imagine a version of myself that didn’t do this. That didn’t orient around his breathing. That didn’t measure the world in whether he was okay. That didn’t feel like everything in me tilted toward him by default. I couldn’t find one.
Thomas shifted beside me and garnered my attention. His eyes flicked to mine. “I’m scared for you,” he said again, quieter this time.
I nodded. Not because I agreed. Because I didn’t have the energy to pretend I wasn’t.
I stayed there until the sky outside the window began to pale—until the dark thinned into gray, until the world remembered how to continue without our permission.
Elliot breathed. The monitor hummed. Thomas sat, part of my silent vigil. My heart ached as the seconds ticked by on an endless loop. Empty. Still. Waiting for something I didn’t know how to put down.