6. Declan #2
"We don't have time." I gesture vaguely toward where Donnelly's body slumps in the chair. "Everything's falling apart right now."
"Then we'll deal with it." Stellan's expression shifts into something that might be determination. "We're in this together. You and me. We'll figure out something."
He's trying. I can see it in the way he's forcing himself to engage with emotional complications he doesn't understand. Stellan doesn't get love. Doesn't get why someone would upend their entire life for another person. But he's my brother, and he's trying anyway.
"Okay." I nod, throat tight. "Okay."
"I'll handle the cleanup here." He tips his chin toward the body. "Go home. Check on Zola. Make sure she's resting."
The suggestion makes something ease in my chest. Home. Zola. The only things that feel real anymore.
"Yeah." I flex my bloody knuckles, already thinking about the shower I'll need before I see her. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me yet." But there's something almost warm in his voice. "We still have to figure out how to solve this mess, but I'll be there. We don't have to do it all right now."
I leave him there with the body and the blood, walking out into afternoon sunlight that feels too bright. My hands throb. My shoulders ache. Everything hurts in that bone-deep way that means I pushed too hard, but at least the restless energy has finally burned out.
The drive home passes in a blur of familiar streets and muscle memory.
I stop at a red light on Girard—the same intersection where Donnelly hit Zola—and have to grip the steering wheel hard enough to hurt.
Four days ago she was driving to class and some careless fuck destroyed everything.
Four days and my entire world shifted off its axis.
But she's alive. Healing. That's what matters. That's what I have to focus on.
I pull into my drive, jogging up to the front door despite the exhaustion dragging at me. I need to see her. Need to make sure she's okay, that she took her medication, that she's not pushing herself too hard.
The door swings open to silence.
"Zo?" I call out, shrugging off my jacket. No answer. "Love, you awake?"
Nothing. The house feels wrong somehow—too still, too empty. I move through the living room toward the stairs that lead up to the bedroom, every instinct I have suddenly screaming that something's off.
The bed's made. Perfectly made, like she spent time on it. Like she was trying to leave things tidy.
My stomach drops.
"Zola?" Louder now, checking the bathroom, the kitchen, back to the bedroom. "Zola!"
She's not here. None of her things are here. The laptop she was using for school—gone. The bag Nialyn brought her with clothes—gone. Even her phone charger's missing from the nightstand.
No. No, this isn't happening. She's probably just—what? Where the fuck would she go three days out from major surgery?
That's when I see it. White paper on the pillow, folded once. My name written across the front in her precise handwriting.
My hands shake as I pick it up. For a long moment I just stare at it, heart hammering against my ribs, unable to make myself open it because once I do this becomes real. Whatever's inside becomes real.
I unfold the letter.
Declan,
I can't do this anymore. I've been lying in your bed for days trying to convince myself this could work, but our lives are too different. We're trying to force something that was never going to fit.
Maybe we've always been trying to do that.
It's never been easy between us because we've never wanted the same things.
Never been right for each other. It's finally time to admit that.
I have plans that won't work if I stay with you.
You're involved in things I shouldn't be close to, and we both know it.
Please don't come looking for me. Let me go so I can figure out my life and you can move forward with yours. This is better for both of us.
I'm sorry.
-Z
The letter crumples in my fist. I can't breathe properly. Can't think past the roaring in my ears that sounds like my entire world ending.
She left. Zola fucking left.
I dial her number with shaking fingers. It goes straight to voicemail. I call again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail.
"Goddamn it!" I throw my phone across the room, hear it crack against the wall. Then I'm moving, grabbing my jacket, my keys, already planning where to check first. Nialyn's place. Her old apartment. The hospital. Somewhere. She has to be somewhere and I will tear this city apart until I find her.
But I'm off kilter. I'm shaking so hard that I think I'd drive into my own fucking house before I got out of the driveway. It's all too fucking much, and I cross the room to pick up my phone—which is miraculously still working.
I dial Stellan, who answers on the second ring. "I thought you'd be busy the rest of—"
"She's gone." The words scrape out. "Zola's gone. She left a fucking letter and disappeared and I can't—I have to find her. I have to—"
"Dec. Slow down." Stellan's voice goes sharp, focused. "What do you mean gone?"
"She's not here. Her stuff's not here. She left a letter saying we're too different and she can't do this anymore.
" I'm pacing now, moving through the house like I might find her hiding somewhere if I just look hard enough.
"I'm going to find her. I'm going to bring her home and we're going to talk about this and—"
"Declan." He cuts me off. "Stop. Think for a second."
"I don't need to think. I need to find her."
"And then what?" There's something careful in his tone. Something that makes my chest constrict. "You drag her back here? Force her to stay?"
"I'm not—that's not—" But the words stick because that's exactly what I'm planning. Find her, convince her, make her understand that we belong together. Whatever it takes.
That's what I've always done. It took me over a year to even get her to answer a phone call, but she did eventually. She fell in love with me. She just needs to see that I'll choose her, that I'll put her first.
"It doesn't sound like she wants you to come after her." Stellan says it quiet. Gentle, even, which is so unlike him that it cuts deeper than if he'd yelled. "You can't force Zola to be with you."
"I'm not forcing—" My voice cracks. I sink onto the edge of the bed, the letter still crumpled in my fist. "I just need to talk to her. Make her understand."
"Understand what? That you're giving up everything for her? That's why she left, Dec. Maybe…" He sighs. "Maybe she doesn't want you to give up your future when she's not sure you are hers."
"My future is with her." The desperation in my voice sounds pathetic even to me. "Nothing else matters."
"Clearly it matters to her."
The truth of that settles over me like concrete. Zola left because she doesn't want my sacrifice. Because she thinks that we can't work. Because she's terrified of dependence and I pushed too hard, gave up too much, showed her exactly what I was willing to lose for her.
And it broke us.
Maybe… Maybe Stellan's right and she realized that she wouldn't do the same for me. That she doesn't want it from me.
"I can't—" I can't finish the sentence. Can't admit that he's right. That she made her choice and I have to respect it even if it destroys me. "Stellan, I can't just let her go."
"I know." He exhales slowly on the other end of the line. "I'm coming over. Don't do anything stupid before I get there."
The call ends. I sit on the bed in the too-quiet home, holding a crumpled letter and trying to figure out how everything fell apart so fast. Four days ago we were fine. Not perfect, but together. Now she's gone and I don't know how to fix it.
I smooth out the letter, read it again. The words don't change. Still the same careful distance, the same heartbreaking sentences.
Please don't come looking for me.
But how am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to just accept that she's gone when every instinct I have is screaming to find her, to fix this, to make her understand that she's wrong about all of it?
I can't stomach that reality. Can't process a world where Zola isn't mine, where she doesn't come home to me, where I don't get to take care of her and make sure she's safe.
But maybe that's not my choice anymore. Maybe it never was.
I fold the letter carefully, hands still shaking, and wait for Stellan to arrive. Because I don't know what else to do. Don't know how to be the man who lets her go when everything in me is built to hold on.