Chapter 5 – Morgan
Five
It Should Have Been Me
Morgan
The knock on my bedroom door felt like an invasion.
An actual assault on my carefully constructed cocoon of self-pity.
I'd been lying in the same position for, what, three hours? Four?
Time had become this weird, fluid thing that didn't seem to matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.
Especially not getting up.
Especially not pretending to be a functional human.
Especially not you.
"Morgan?" Micah's voice filtered through the door, gentle but persistent. All that fake patience wrapped around a core of pure stubborn. "I'm bloody coming in whether you answer or not, so you might as well save us both the awkwardness."
Of course he was.
Because God forbid I get to wallow in peace.
I pulled the covers over my head. Maybe if I stayed very still, he'd think I was dead and leave me alone.
You wish.
Yeah. I really fucking did.
The door opened anyway. Of course it did. Micah had never been good at taking hints, which was usually one of his more endearing qualities.
Today it felt like torture.
"Christ, it smells like a tomb in here." The curtains snapped open, letting in aggressive sunlight that felt like needles in my eyeballs. Actual physical violence via vitamin D. "When's the last time you showered? Or ate something that wasn't crackers?"
"Go away." My voice came out as a croak.
When had I last had water? Yesterday? The day before?
My lips were cracked, my throat raw from dehydration and too much crying. Apparently, grief was a full-contact sport, and I was losing.
"Not happening." The mattress dipped as he sat down, and I felt the weight of his concern pressing against my ribs like a physical force. "Gwen's worried. Atticus is worried. Hell, even Pierce asked about you yesterday, and that man has the emotional range of a brick wall."
Pierce asked about me.
Shit. That was bad.
"Don't be." I turned my face away from him, burrowing deeper into Lance's pillow. It still smelled like him, sandalwood and something indefinably masculine that made my chest ache. But the scent was fading. Soon, there would be nothing left of him at all. "I'm fine."
Such a liar.
"You're wasting away."
Good. Maybe I'll just disappear entirely.
Maybe that's the plan.
"Morgan." His hand found my shoulder through the blankets, squeezed gentle but firm. Like he was trying to anchor me to the world when all I wanted to do was float away. "Talk to me. What's going on in that head of yours?"
Oh, just the greatest hits of my mental breakdown. Self-recrimination on repeat. Despair as the opening act. A mental highlight reel of every moment I should have said I loved him more, should have fought harder against him leaving that morning, should have insisted on going with him.
Should have been the one to die.
I was quiet for so long I thought he might give up and leave. Instead, he just waited. Patient as a saint, stubborn as a mule.
It was infuriating and comforting in equal measure.
Finally, the words scraped out of me like broken glass.
"It should have been me."
The silence that followed felt infinite.
Crushing.
"In the car," I continued, my voice barely above a whisper. Because apparently I was doing this now. Bleeding all over my best friend. "It should have been me who died. Not him. I cannot stop thinking about that. Every day."
"Morgan—"
"He was good, Micah." The words tumbled out in a rush, all the poison I'd been swallowing for weeks. "He was trying to make amends for his family's shit, helping people, being better than what he came from. He was important. He mattered. He was changing lives and saving people and—"
My voice cracked.
"And me? I'm just…I'm nobody special. I make pretty dresses for rich women who have too much money and too little sense.
" I was spiraling now, the words coming faster.
Like a runaway train of self-hatred. "I bitched about everything.
I complain when it's too cold, and when the Wi-Fi's slow.
I don't save people or change lives or matter to anyone except—"
"Stop." His voice cut through my spiral like a blade. "Stop right fucking there."
I finally turned to look at him. His face was harder than I'd ever seen it, brown eyes flashing with something that might have been anger.
At me.
Great. Even Micah was done with my shit.
"You think Lance would want to hear you talking about yourself like this?"
Lance isn't here to hear anything.
That's the whole fucking problem.
"He's gone, Micah."
"I know." His voice softened, but his grip on my shoulder tightened. Like he was trying to squeeze some sense into me. "I know he is, love. And I know you feel like you should have gone with him. But you didn't. You're here. And we need you."
"You don't need me."
"Bullshit." He reached into the bag he'd brought and pulled out a family-size bag of gummy bears, the good ones, the Haribo ones that actually tasted like fruit instead of sugar and sadness.
"Your family needs you. Gwen needs you, she's barely holding it together with a newborn and Atticus working himself to death trying to keep everyone safe.
She's putting on a brave face, but she's falling apart just like you are. "
Everyone's falling apart.
Everything's broken.
The whole world is basically fucked.
"Atticus needs you because he loves you even if he's shit at saying it," Micah continued. "And I need you because you’ve become my best bloody friend and I refuse to lose two people I care about."
The gummy bears sat between us like a challenge. Red ones on top, my favorites, which he absolutely knew.
Manipulative bastard.
"I'm not hungry."
"I don't care. You're going to eat them anyway." He ripped open the bag with more force than necessary, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet room. "Because that's what living people do. They eat gummy bears and read ridiculous romance novels and keep going even when everything feels impossible."
I stared at him. “You brought me books?”
"Oh yes." He reached into his bag again and pulled out a paperback with a shirtless alien on the cover, complete with purple skin and what looked like tentacles for hair.
The title was written in glittery letters: Claimed by the Zephyrian Prince.
"It's about a human woman who gets abducted by aliens and falls in love with their emotionally constipated leader who has tentacles for hair and a cock that glows blue. "
Despite everything, despite the grief crushing my chest and the guilt eating me alive and the certainty that I'd never feel happiness again. I felt my lips twitch.
Traitors.
"That sounds terrible."
"It's absolutely bonkers. The plot makes no sense, the dialogue is insane, and I'm pretty sure the author has never actually seen human anatomy if the size of the alien peen is to believed.” He grinned at me, the first genuine smile I'd seen from anyone in weeks.
“But it’s a fucking great story and will have you staying up all night to read it. You're going to love it."
"I doubt that."
"Trust me. It's so bad it's good. Plus, the heroine's name is Zara, she's from Texas, and she spends the first three chapters calling the alien prince a 'pompous tentacle-headed asshole.
'" He pressed the book into my hands along with a handful of gummy bears.
"We're going to read it together, and you're going to make fun of the ridiculous alien anatomy, and for an hour or two you're going to remember that there are still things in this world worth laughing about. "
There will never be anything worth laughing about again.
But the gummy bears were already dissolving on my tongue, sugar hitting my empty stomach like a tiny spark of something that wasn't despair. And Micah was looking at me with so much hope and determination that I felt guilty for wanting to disappoint him.
Guilt. The gift that keeps on giving.
"Besides," he continued, settling back against the headboard like he was planning to stay for the long haul, "the heroine reminds me of you.
Stubborn as hell, terrible at accepting help, and completely incapable of recognizing her own worth until some gorgeous bastard shows her exactly how extraordinary she is. "
Lance used to tell me I was extraordinary.
The thought hit like a sucker punch, stealing my breath. I doubled over, clutching the book to my chest as grief rolled through me in waves. Fresh tears leaked from eyes that felt permanently raw.
Crying again. What a fucking surprise.
"I can't do this," I whispered. "I can't keep going without him. I don't know how to exist in a world where he doesn't."
Micah's arms came around me, solid and warm and nothing like Lance but better than the crushing emptiness that had been my only companion for weeks.
"You can," he said simply. "You survived losing your mom. You made your dream happen despite your cunt of a father, while living on ramen and determination. You fought your way back from rock bottom more times than anyone should have to. You can survive this too."
"But I don't want to." The confession tore out of me like a physical wound. "I don't want to be strong anymore. I don't want to keep fighting. I just want him back."
"I know. God, I know. But you're going to keep fighting anyway.
" His voice was steady, certain. "Because that's who you are, Morgan.
You're a fighter. Even when you don't want to fight anymore, even when you're tired of being strong, even when the whole world feels like it's ending, you keep going. "
I cried then. Ugly, wrenching sobs that felt like they were tearing me apart from the inside. Micah just held me and let me fall apart on his shoulder, rubbing circles on my back like I was a child with a nightmare instead of a grown woman having a complete breakdown.
When the storm finally passed, leaving me exhausted but somehow marginally more human, he handed me tissues and opened the book to chapter one.