Chapter 28 Dove
DOVE
It was almost like a tennis match, my eyes darting from Jedd to Liv to Ellis and then back to Jedd as his words registered among us all. Liv blinked at him, her expression blank, and I wondered if she had even heard what he said—or if she had, whether she was simply stunned by it.
“What do you mean?” I asked, the words falling out sharp and demanding, shattering the silence that had settled.
“I mean, it wasn’t instant death,” Jedd murmured, his eyes haunted. “She was in a coma for a time, but she was never going to wake up again. Her mom—her mom had a hard time letting go.”
Liv’s lower lip trembled.
“So how did she go from running away to dying for Bri?” Dove asked
Jedd rubbed his chin, eyes haunted as he stared at the floor.
“I mean, I wasn’t there for it. In the moment.
I was…I found a hiding spot. The owner of the club, Nia, she yanked me into a back room, a storage-cupboard type of thing.
It was a door in the wall I had never noticed before.
She pulled in whoever she could, shut it, and then told us to be quiet. ”
Liv’s eyes widened at his words and she got to her feet, pacing, running her hands through her hair.
“We were crammed in there, me and like eight other people. Kyle was there.” Jedd’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.
“We could hear the gunfire. The screaming. It felt like hours, being locked in there.” His voice faltered.
“Then the cops finally took him out and we could leave, and I—I ran straight to the dance floor. It was where I had last seen Liv while Kyle and I were getting drinks.”
Jedd’s face crumpled as he gripped his knees. “I saw Ryan on the stage. He was… he didn’t make it.”
Liv crouched suddenly, her head between her knees as she held it in her hands, no sound leaving her.
“There was so much blood everywhere,” Jedd whimpered, a sob breaking from his throat as he covered his mouth.
“Kyle found Ryan, and I—I’ll never get that sound out of my mind.
The noise he made when he—when he realized.
” Jedd’s eyes met ours, and Ellis gripped my hand, her lip trembling as tears spilled from her eyes.
“Then I found Liv and Bri, toward the end of the dance floor.”
Liv hardly moved, just rocked low on her heels as she crouched, as if trying to keep herself from throwing up—even if she couldn’t.
“Liv was lying across Bri,” Jedd went on, sucking back a sob.
He sniffed loudly, wiping his eyes aggressively and clearing his throat.
“Bri was alive… but Liv… Liv was gone. She told me—Bri told me—when she saw me, when I pulled Liv’s hair out of Bri’s face, the first thing she said was, ‘She took a bullet for me. Jedd, Liv’s gone. Liv’s gone. Liv’s gone.’”
Liv dropped onto her ass, leaning her back against the side of Jedd’s chair, her head falling back as she stared up at the ceiling. Ellis cried softly beside me, her face in her hands. I squeezed her leg gently and cleared my throat, trying to hold my own emotions together.
“Bri said there was this moment when the crowd shifted, people panicking, and it parted just enough that she locked eyes with the shooter. She screamed. She couldn’t find Liv, so she just screamed Liv’s name.
He aimed at her, and Liv…” Jedd broke off, his chest heaving, and when he found his voice again, it was cracked.
“Bri said it was like a superhero moment. Liv just appeared out of nowhere and threw herself in front of Bri, pulling her into a hug, her back to the shooter.”
Jedd put his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking, and my heart ached—for him, and for Liv, who sat just below him, her eyes unblinking at the ceiling.
“She saved Bri’s life,” Ellis whispered. “And gave up her own.”
Liv shook her head back and forth, as if the truth was almost more unbearable to hear than the idea she had been sitting with all this time.
“No,” she whispered weakly. “I made it to the door. I did. I made it.”
“She says she made it to the door,” Ellis whimpered, rubbing her eyes.
My chest tightened as I watched Liv’s crumbling emotions and her complete inability to portray them.
Jedd’s gaze was steady as he looked at us, his eyes and face red from where his palms had been pressed.
He shook his head, sniffing. “She didn’t make it out,” he said, the pain radiating through his words.
“Bri only lived because Liv didn’t let her die.
If she had been running, she came back. She came back for Bri. ”
Liv’s eyes were wide, almost lost, as she looked to me and Ellis, as if trying to claw back at memories that just weren’t there anymore.
“So Bri… is Bri still alive?” I asked, my hand still resting on Ellis’s leg as her sniffles subsided.
“She’s alive.” Jedd nodded. “It fucked her up bad, though—the aftermath too. It didn’t help that we had this small moment of hope, when we realized she wasn’t dead yet, that she had a pulse.
So when she was in that coma, we all just hoped and prayed.
.. and then... then we had to accept it.
Bri just fell into depression afterward, months of it.
She only opened up to me once, after a night of heavy drinking.
She’ll always regret screaming Liv’s name—that if she hadn’t, Liv would still be here.
That if she hadn’t frozen and just run, maybe both of them would still be here. ”
Jedd shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.
“She stopped leaving the house, wouldn’t get out of bed.
Then one day she left a note, packed a bag, and disappeared.
She’s been traveling, from what I’ve gathered.
I get a postcard every now and then—nothing written on it, just her name.
I think she’s trying to… I think she’s working through it in her own way. Making sense of it.”
Liv looked down at her hands.
“The last card I got was from a small town in outback Australia.”
Liv’s head snapped up, a small smile on her face. “She always wanted to go to Australia.”
I exhaled slowly as I thought of Bri, this person I had never met, my mind painting her anyway.
The resemblance wasn’t in Ellis’s features but in her spirit, in that relentless pain of all-consuming survivor’s guilt.
My eyes shifted to Ellis beside me, her hand now gripping mine so tightly I could feel the slight tremor in her body.
She was pale, her eyes fixed on the floor, and I knew she saw the resemblance too.
Two women alive when someone else wasn’t, both crushed under the invisible weight of why.
“Is Kyle alive?” Liv asked weakly.
“Kyle…” I asked as Jedd met my eyes. “Is he alive?”
“He’s alive,” Jedd said with a nod. “He’s getting there. He’ll—he’ll be okay. Eventually. We still hang out—a lot, actually. Neither of us can really handle being alone.”
I nodded gently as I felt his pain—his anguish and sadness clinging to him like an ever-present gray cloud, holding him back from truly existing, leaving him in the limbo grief traps you in, where you spend more time searching for a way out before realizing it’s right in front of you.
If you’re brave enough to take the step.
“Liv is here,” I told Jedd softly, using the tone I used in the shop—the kind that put people at ease. “She’s sitting beside your chair. On the floor.”
Jedd sat forward, his elbows once more braced against his knees, as if he were holding himself together by sheer force of will. His eyes flicked to the spot Liv occupied, raw and red-rimmed, his lip trembling.
“She wants to talk to you,” I murmured as Liv’s eyes met mine.
His throat bobbed, and he gave me the faintest nod he could muster, his jaw locked as he fought to hold his emotions in check.
“Tell him I’m sorry,” Liv said softly, leaning her head back to look at him. Her hand reached up behind her, as if to touch him but knowing she couldn’t.
“She says she’s sorry,” I whispered, tears burning behind my eyes.
Jedd’s jaw clenched, and he shook his head fiercely. “No. No, she doesn’t get to say sorry. She doesn’t owe anyone any sorries.”
“Stop,” Liv whispered, and I echoed her words. “I clearly made a choice. I heard Bri, I saw the gun, and I didn’t think—I acted. She mattered to me. You all did. And I would have done the same for anyone. I know that.”
Jedd dragged his hands down his face as I finished repeating Liv’s words. “Jesus, Liv…”
A sad smile tugged at her lips as she spoke again. “I loved you. In every way someone like me could love someone, Jedd. You—you were my safe space for so long.”
I cleared my throat as tears blurred my vision, Ellis’s hand pressing gently against my back, rubbing in slow circles—an anchor of comfort, her soft scent wrapping around me.
Another sob escaped him, and he turned, truly looking at the space beside his chair, as if he could really see her. “I love you too,” he choked. “God, I love you, Liv. You were—you are—so much to me. I can’t let you go.”
My chest ached as Liv got to her knees and crawled to sit before him, her hands resting lightly on his knees. The sound that left her throat was akin to a sob and yet not.
“She’s in front of you now,” Ellis whispered weakly.
Jedd looked ahead, his eyes searching, and his hands dropped to his knees, resting where Liv’s would have been. He trembled slightly.
“I never wanted to leave you like that,” Liv whispered. “But I need you to live, Jedd. Really live. For both of us.”
The words were fragile as they left my mouth, and I hurriedly wiped away the stray tear that slipped from my eye. Jedd sniffed deeply as her message was conveyed.
“You were home for me, always. Don’t ever forget that, Jedd. But—but you can be a home for someone else too.” Her eyes wandered around the room, snagging on her photos and her pink jacket, her lips tugging into a sad smile. “Let me go. Don’t hold on to me forever.”
The silence that followed my words to Jedd was almost suffocating—holy—and something I would never forget as long as I lived.