Trey
I’ve been up for a while.
Back against the wall, watching the guys do whatever it is they’re doing.
I can’t really focus on it because I keep coming back to the same thing.
I never told her.
The night Cal sat with me on the porch and didn’t push and somehow that made it easier to say the things I’d been carrying.
The way he saw things that maybe I wasn’t ready to see before that.
Does she look at you? You know what I mean.
And I did know. I knew exactly what he meant because I’d been paying attention to every one of those moments and telling myself they didn’t count, that I was reading into it, that wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.
And Cal just looked at me and said then you’re not stuck. You’re just not there yet.
I believed him. That’s the thing. I actually let myself believe it.
Stopped waiting for some system confirmation that was never going to come anyway and just — let it be real.
Let her be real. Let the idea that she was mine the same way she was theirs be something I could hold onto. Maybe even let myself want.
And then they took her.
Fuck. This isn’t helping.
I watch Locke on the mattress.
It’s digging at me because this isn’t him. He’s flat on his back, not moving, not breaking anything. Locke who went into boiling water without thinking twice. Just lying there with something cracked open behind his eyes that he’s not letting out and not letting go of either.
The thoughts keep coming even as I watch Locke lose himself.
Because I need to know, does it even matter? The bond, what Cal said, what I never got to say to her — does any of it matter now.
It has to.
She has to matter enough that it matters.
I push off the wall.
“Alright.” Just loud enough that I have their attention.
Beckett looks up. Locke doesn’t move.
“I get it.” I look around the room. “I do. It’s killing me too. I never even got to—” I stop, trying to hold it together. “But look at yourselves. Look at what we’re doing.”
Nobody answers.
“She’s out there right now. Alone. With people who told her to her face that she shouldn’t exist.” My voice stays steady. “And we’re in here. Falling apart. Like it’s over.”
Locke’s jaw tightens.
“Kyron’s in the sky because he’s decided she abandoned us. Beckett’s checked out. Rane you haven’t stopped talking since you woke up and I get why but talking isn’t doing anything.” I look at Locke. “And you — you don’t do this. You don’t lie down.”
Something moves across Locke’s face. The look of a man who knows he’s doing the wrong thing and hates that someone said it out loud.
“She made a choice. A terrible, brave, stupid choice because she thought that’s what she had to do.
She’s somewhere right now not knowing if we’re okay.
Not knowing if it worked. Thinking she left us in the dirt and it might not have even been enough.
” My throat tightens. “Imagine how she feels. Imagine what that’s like. ”
“None of you would let her go. I’ve known you five minutes in the grand scheme of things and I know that much. So stop acting like this is the end. She’s waiting. She doesn’t know it yet but she is. And she deserves better than us falling apart in here while she’s alone with them.”
This isn’t about us, not anymore. The moment she walked into my life, that was it. And we’re just going to sit here and do nothing?
I can’t live with that.
The door creaks open.
“You’re right.”