Page 260 of Before We Were

I finally understand why she always said this song was about more than love. She said it was about finding the one person who saw all your cracks and didn’t flinch.

Nora told me I didn't need fixing. It was true, though not in the way she meant it.

What I needed was saving, a hand reaching into the darkness to pull me back from the edge I've been walking since I was old enough to understand what destruction looked like.

Fucking tragic, I know. The kind of melodramatic shit I'd mock someone else for saying. But with her blood still under my fingernails and her life hanging by threads I can't see or control, I'm beyond caring how pathetic it sounds.

It was her love, always her love, that tethered me to this world when everything else turned to shit—when the reflection in the mirror started looking too much like the man I swore I'd never become.

Now, with this poison numbing the ache and dragging me under, the sound of that song and her voice, it’s the only thing keeping me from slipping all the way.

My muscles twitch and spasm, a desperate dance beneath my skin. Each heartbeat stretches longer than the last, time losing meaning as the high claims me. The needle offers oblivion, but her memory offers something I've never deserved but always craved—forgiveness.

The song loops, and with each rotation, the line between Heaven and Hell blurs further. Angels and demons trade places in the lyrics until I can't tell which one I'm begging to save me. She appears in the darkness behind my eyelids, a ghost made of regret and unspoken words. Those green eyes that always saw straight through my bullshit are swimming with tears now.

Don't look at me like that, Leni.

You knew what I was from the start.

But the thought slips away before I can hold onto it, just another piece of me scattered to the wind.

The euphoria hits like a tidal wave of liquid gold, burning away every scar, every mistake, every moment I've spent trying to outrun my father's shadow. The void opens beneath me, beautiful and endless, promising the peace I've never found in sobriety.

The devil sits beside me in the darkness, patient as an old friend. We don't need words anymore—we both know this dance by heart.

They say silence is where demons come to play, but they never tell you how seductive the darkness can be. How it wraps around you like a lover's arms, promising to keep all your secrets.

The rush floods my veins, offering to erase it all—the way her blood felt on my hands, Jake's last words echoing in my skull, the poison legacy running through my veins. When you've waltzed with the devil this long, you forget there was ever any other partner to choose.

Some angels can't save what doesn't want saving.

The void swallows me whole, and for the first time since that night everything went wrong, I don't fight it.

I just fall.

CHAPTER76

BECOMING THROUGH BREAKING

NORA

"Dad?"

He appears like a photograph in reverse development, his edges bleeding into reality with the same gentle grace he carried in life.

"Hi Leni."

That smile—the one that could chase away nightmares and mend broken hearts—hasn't aged a day. If anything, he looks younger, as if time decided to unwind itself just for this moment.

"Where are we?"

The front room materializes around us, our Sunday sanctuary where classic literature became life lessons. The walls pulse with living memories—not just frozen snapshots, but moments suspended in time. But there's a wrongness here, like a piano key struck half a step off.

"This isn't where I'm supposed to be, is it?"

Dad's smile turns knowing, tinged with the wisdom that only comes from the other side of forever.

"No, sweetheart, it's not."

---