Chapter 35
Khalee
I wake up gasping.
My body jolts forward like I’ve been yanked out of something deep, something dark and warm and gone. I’m sweating. Chest tight. Heart racing. My hands tremble against the stiff sheets as I try to breathe, but nothing feels right. The room is quiet. Too quiet.
There’s this awful emptiness sitting on my chest, pressing down, like grief just crawled into my lungs and made a home there.
Like something was here and now it’s not.
It’s not pain. Not exactly. But it’s not peace either.
Its absence. And it hurts in a way that doesn’t make sense, like mourning someone you haven’t even lost yet, but knowing deep down… You have.
I reach for the side of the bed, his side. It’s cold. Not just physically. Cold in the way something sacred goes still when it’s no longer being held. And that’s when I know.
“Kaze?” I whisper.
My voice is raw. Dry. Like I haven’t used it in days. I wait. No response.
“Kaze…” I try again, this time softer—a plea.
Still nothing.
The air feels heavier now. Thicker. Like the oxygen’s fighting me back. And all at once, I understand what I’m feeling.
He’s gone.
“No, no, no, no…”
The words spill from my mouth like a prayer too late. I throw the blankets off and push myself out of the bed, the cold floor biting at my feet. I move fast, too fast, but I don’t care. I need to see. I need proof that I’m wrong. That he’s still here.
I swing the door open,
And crash straight into my mother.
She’s just got to the room with a paper cup of coffee in her hand that slips from her fingers, hits the floor, and splashes dark liquid across the tiles. Neither of us notices. Not really.
“Khalee!” she gasps. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“I have to go, ” I say, my voice shaking. My breath won’t settle. “I have to find him.”
She reaches for me instinctively. “Go where? What are you talking about?”
“He’s gone, Mom.” The words taste like ash. “He’s not here anymore.”
She freezes. Her eyes search mine, and something in her expression, some quiet, painful recognition, makes my stomach twist. Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“Baby…” she says slowly. “Maybe… maybe it’s the medication. You’ve been receiving treatment, and it’s been helping. Maybe this is just your mind trying to, ”
“What do you mean?” I interrupt, voice sharp and cracking. She flinches. I don’t mean to hurt her. I’m just,
I’m drowning.
“You’ve been through so much, ” she says gently. Carefully. Like every word might shatter me. “And sometimes… the mind creates what it needs to survive.”
“He was real, Mom.” I insist with everything I have left. But even as I say it, even as I fight to hold on, something inside me wavers. Because if he was real… why does it feel like all that’s left is an echo?
“He was real, ” I whisper again, but my voice is thinner now. “He was.”
My mother steps closer and wraps her arms around me. And for a second, just one, I let her hold the pieces of me.
“Of course he was, baby, ” she murmurs, pressing her cheek against mine. “As real as he could be.”
He was real.
It was all real.
He was real.
I repeat it in my head like a lifeline, over and over, holding onto the words the way someone clings to wreckage in a storm.
He was real.
He was.
I’m still in my mother’s arms, but I barely feel her. My body’s pressed against hers, my breath shallow, my hands limp at her back, but inside, I’m screaming.
No. I’m not having it.
I won’t let him be reduced to a symptom or a side effect. I won’t let us be nothing. I know what I felt. I know what I believe. And I believe in him. In us.
And then, something shifts inside me.
A pull.
Like a string tugging gently but urgently behind my ribs. Like I’m needed. Like I’m meant to be somewhere.
I don’t know where. I don’t know why. But I feel it. A magnetic ache. A direction without a name.
And then, voice.
Not his. But hers.
“Always feel it, Khalee. Whatever the universe might try to tell you, you won’t always hear it. You won’t always see it. But sometimes… You just have to feel it.”
Ms. Joana’s voice echoes in my memory like she’s saying it right now, not years ago under her roof in a space full of dreams and magic.
And I feel it now.
All of it.
That pull, that push, that instinct that doesn’t make sense but won’t let go.
My mother’s still whispering something soft into my ear, but I’m already leaving her in my mind. Already chasing something I can’t explain.
“I’m sorry, ” I whisper, and I pull away.
“Khalee?” she asks, confused, her hand reaching for mine.
But I’m already turning, already moving, already running.
Down the hall, slippers slapping against the polished floors, the hospital robe fluttering behind me like wings not fully formed. I hear her calling my name, maybe a nurse too, but it’s muffled under the thud of my heartbeat and that pull inside me screaming: go, go, go.
My legs carry me forward like they’ve known this route forever. Like this moment was always waiting.
And I don’t stop to think. I don’t ask questions. Because I don’t need answers right now. I just need to feel. I just need to find him. And somehow, deep down, I know that wherever I’m going… he’ll be there.
I run through the hospital corridors, past nurses, past the sterile smell and blinking lights. My footsteps echo off the polished floor, fast and uneven, my breath tight in my chest. I don’t know where I’m going, but my body does. It pulls me forward with a sense of urgency I can’t explain.
Then something shifts. I catch sight of a room on my left. A couple is inside, clinging to each other in quiet grief beside a hospital bed. Doctors and nurses stand just outside the glass, silent, watching. The air feels heavy, suspended. Everyone is waiting for something.
And suddenly, so am I.
I slow, one step at a time, as if moving through a dream. Detached from my own limbs, from my own breath, I drift toward the window, not knowing why until I see him.
A man is lying there. Peaceful. Unmoving. His skin is pale, but not lifeless. His chest rises and falls in a rhythm kept alive by the machines surrounding him. His hair is neatly cut. His face is untouched, unaged, like someone who simply… paused.
And in that moment, something inside me breaks open.
Because the man in that bed is the same one who has been chasing me for months, haunting me for years, and loving me even beyond the veil, he’s not a ghost. He’s real. Flesh and blood, but barely alive.
And he’s here. Has been here all along.