Chapter 1
Chapter one
EMMA EASTON
I can’t stop shaking. It’s like I’ve been ripped from a frozen lake, yet I’m covered in hospital blankets.
My teeth are chattering so hard that my jaw aches, every muscle locked tight as if my body is bracing for an inevitable blow.
My hands won’t obey me. I press them flat against my thighs, try to ground myself, to breathe, but my lungs keep forgetting how.
The heart monitor keeps blaring warnings that it’s panicking, like a bird trapped in a crevice that it might die in.
I feel like it will eventually beat so fast that it will just trip over itself.
He’s gone.
He’s gone he’s gone he’s gone—
I have my phone clutched uselessly in my hand. I’ve called him so many times that my thumb is actually numb. But he has me blocked. Again.
I just had him back.
The thought rips through my stupid, devastated heart. I had him back. His voice. His laugh. His hands on me, loving me, like I was worth surviving for.
And they took him from me.
My chest caves in, pain detonating behind my ribs, and I fold forward with a broken sound tearing out of me.
My stomach lurches violently. I barely manage to twist before I’m retching over the side of the hospital bed, bile burning my throat as my body empties itself like it’s trying to purge him from me.
“Emma, shit—”
Hands grab me before I fall and hit the floor. Strong arms. Micah.
I collapse into him, sobbing so hard I can’t catch air, my face buried in his shoulder as my body betrays me completely. My heart feels like it’s splintering, cracking open piece by piece, each one slicing deeper into surrounding flesh than the last. I’ve never known a pain like this.
“I can’t—” I choke. “I can’t feel my hands. My face. I can’t—Micah, he left us. He left me.”
Heather’s crying somewhere to my left.
A nurse rushes in, her voice too calm for my current state of mind. “Okay, sweetheart, I need you to breathe with me. Can you look at me?”
I can’t.
All I can see is him. All I can feel is the echo of his absence. The hollow space he ripped open inside my chest when he disappeared again without warning, without a proper goodbye or chance to convince him to stay.
I just had him back.
And now he’s gone.
The room is dark except for the glow of the hallway bleeding in beneath the heavy hospital door.
Two days have passed. I know because the nurse told me this morning.
Two days of IVs, sedatives, doctors explaining that my heart is under “severe stress,” that my body essentially short-circuited under the panic and the grief.
It completely stopped making sense, firing pain, numbness, and tightness over and over.
Broken-heart syndrome, they call it. They said my heart will recover quickly since I'm young, but they don't know me. They don't know how much I love Jude Graves.
My body feels heavy now, loaded with a myriad of drugs I can’t even pronounce.
I haven’t felt…here since he left. When I found out what happened, I collapsed into Micah, and we cried together sitting in the driveway of the beach house.
But I spiraled so hard before I could truly grasp everything that happened.
So I know I need to talk to Micah, and figure out once and for all what the hell went wrong.
He and Heather are sitting on the small couch by the window that’s currently made into the bed they’ve been sleeping on.
They haven’t left my side. Heather’s knees are tucked to her chest, her head resting against Micah’s shoulder.
Micah stares at the floor like he still can’t believe what happened, either.
He’s been very quiet, considering his best friend abandoned him, too.
I’m finally aware of the suffocating silence, so I break it. “What happened to him? Can you tell me what made him leave?”
Micah exhales slowly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He drags a hand through his messy blonde hair, fingers snagging. “You don’t want this answer right now,” he says quietly. “They just got you stable, Emma.”
“I don’t care,” I whisper. “Not knowing is going to be worse for me. I know it’s bad…you said as much the other day. But I want to know more." I pause, feeling the heaviness of the drugs smoothing over the rougher edges of my anxiety. "Please.”
Heather shifts, shooting Micah a frustrated look, but she doesn’t stop him.
She just leans into his side a little harder.
I know she’s angry with him, too. He’s kept us in the dark just as much as Jude has.
It’s felt like a betrayal, considering I’ve wanted to help him since the beginning.
So I have to know why this reality was more of an option than just doing something to save him before.
"Well, you know that Jude has killed people for Nolan," he starts, his voice a mere whisper as he glances around our room.
I nod, and Heather's face twists.
Micah swallows. “He's been killing for someone other than Nolan. His name’s Alexei.”
I blink at him. Once. Twice. “What do you mean, killing? He didn't stop after Portland? How—”
Micah looks up at me then, and the guilt in his eyes is immediate and brutal. “That guy who came to the house,” he says. “When you thought it was the pizza delivery. Remember that?”
My stomach drops. I do. I remember how weird they both acted, and how intense that man was.
“That was Alexei.”
The room tilts slightly, and I have I grip the edge of the hospital bed.
“He’s a Russian crime lord,” Micah continues. “And he’s…bad, Emma. Worse than Nolan. Way worse. He’s essentially forced Jude to be his attack dog. He knows all about the blackmail that Nolan has on him, and saw an opportunity.”
My vision blurs, tears flooding without warning. “He didn’t tell me,” I whisper, more to myself than them. “You didn’t tell me.” I stare at him, suddenly clenching my fists. "Micah, why the fuck didn't you tell me?"
He flinches. "I know," he says, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry, Emma. He didn’t want you to know. He held onto you until he literally couldn’t anymore. It broke him to do what he did. Please know that.”
Heather finally speaks, her tone sharp. “What a fucking asshole. Both of you.” She glares at him, and for a moment, I see the anger she’s been trying to keep at bay for my sake.
Micah nods, shame etched into every line of his face. “I don’t know what to do. When he left with them, they told me that if I told anyone,” he says quietly, “they’d kill him.”
The room goes silent again, and I feel sick.
I feel angry.
I feel devastated.
Micah continues, softer now. “They let me go. I’m free from them.
But Jude…he left to protect us, even if it doesn’t seem like it.
Because they would absolutely kill any of us if they wanted to.
Perhaps not Nolan, but Alexei would. That’s why he didn’t want you to know about him.
He was terrified that he would find out about you. ”
My heart stutters painfully. “No,” I breathe. “No, that doesn’t—he wouldn’t—”
“He did,” Micah says. “For us. For you.”
I press my hand to my chest, like I can physically prevent my heart from just falling out, the stupid thing. Killing. Russian crime lords. Secrets so heavy they crushed him under their weight. Jude didn’t leave me because he wanted to. He left me because he thought it was the only way to survive.
Micah hesitates, then adds, “There’s more.”
I look at him, dread pooling in my stomach.
“The announcement went out this morning,” he says. “Dissonance is officially broken up.”
I narrow my gaze. “What?”
“I’ve been fielding calls all day,” he continues. “Finnick. Kami. They’re confused as fuck. No one knows what’s going on.”
The band is gone.
Jude is gone.
I lay back and stare at the ceiling, tears sliding silently into my hair. The wretched claws of anxiety are working their way back into my chest, even through the medicine somehow. “Heather, can you get the nurse? I need meds. Now.”
Heather nods immediately and stands, leaving Micah and me alone.
“I’m so sorry, Emma,” he murmurs.
I look at him, a hand still on my chest in an attempt to fight off the demon thrashing beneath my ribs. I love Micah, but I hate him, too right now.
“He loves you more than anything. You have to know that. In another life, he said things would have been so different.”
I bite the inside of my cheek just as Heather returns with the nurse. Micah lies back against the pillows and closes his eyes. As angry as I am, I understand that he also just lost his best friend. But damn it, why didn't he tell me? Why didn't he do more?
I’m standing in my kitchen, sunlight spilling through the window and warming the counters. Music plays quietly from my phone as I finish drying the last dish.
Jude rounds the corner, hazel eyes lighting up when they land on me. He crosses the room immediately and pulls me into a tight hug, squeezing so hard I let out a small yelp.
“You’re home,” I say into his chest. “I missed you so much.”
He smiles. “I missed you, too. How are my girls?”
Before I can answer, a tiny voice shrieks from the living room. “Daddy!”
We turn together as our black-haired little girl comes barreling toward us, arms outstretched.
“There she is!” Jude drops to his knees just in time to catch her as she leaps into his arms.
My chest warms as I watch him with her. I turn back to the counters long enough to wipe them down before arms slip around my waist from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder.
When I glance down, the track marks on his arms are gone.
I sigh, closing my eyes to enjoy his warmth. The love of my life. My husband.
But before I can spin in his arms to steal a kiss, he coughs, suddenly staggering away from me.
“Hey,” I reach for him, my fingers brushing his wrist—
Cold.
I jerk my hand back. “Jude?”
He doesn’t look at me. Instead, his gaze drifts past my shoulder. It’s unfocused, like he’s listening to someone or something I can’t hear. The music from my phone warps. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he says suddenly.
My stomach drops. “What do you mean? This is our kitchen. We live here.”
His eyes finally meet mine, but they’re dark now. Empty. Gone.
“Why didn’t you let me go?” he asks softly. “We both know that we would have been better off without each other.”
Panic creeps in. “You’re scaring me.”
He exhales and rubs his hands together. I quickly notice that it looks like he’s trying to scrub something off. That’s when I see the dark stains smeared across his palms.
Blood.
“No,” I whisper, backing away. “No, no—”
He steps toward me. The floor creaks too loudly beneath his feet.
The light flickers. The edges of the room blur, like the world is collapsing.
His arms are suddenly littered with bloody track marks.
His face blooms with cuts and bruises. “I did it so you’d be safe,” he says.
“You always fucking ruin my life when you come looking for me.”
“I didn’t ruin anything,” I cry. “You left me. Again.”
His face tightens, pain cracking through the numbness. “I had to,” he says. “And you can’t save me. Not from this.”
I reach for him anyway. My hands pass straight through his chest.
He’s gone.
The kitchen collapses around me—the counters dissolving, the sunlight bleeding away. The music cuts off abruptly, leaving a high, ringing silence.
“Jude!” I scream, lunging for the front door, like he’s just walked out again. Then the floor drops out from under me, too.
I wake up gasping, my body jerking violently against the hospital bed.
My heart slams against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
My hands claw at the sheets, breathing too fast. I blink several times, looking around to see that I'm still in the hospital, with Micah and Heather sleeping on their pull-out bed.
You can’t save me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, tears spilling over my cheeks. My shoulders shake with silent sobs, careful not to wake them.