Page 12 of Heatstroke

The sight of him like this—undone, unarmed—was worse than any argument, any fight they could have had.

He shut the door before he could think better of it.

The next forty-eighthours passed in a blur of evasion and bad decisions.

Daniel turned his phone off first. Then, when that felt too much like cowardice, he turned it back on—only to ignore the steady stream of messages lighting up the screen.

Where'd you go?

Talk to me.

Daniel.

Please.

He didn’t care where Thierry had gotten his number—probably from the receptionist at The Breakline. It didn’t matter, because he left them unanswered.

Instead, he walked. The island's eastern trails were steep, overgrown, the kind of paths tourists avoided. It was perfect. He climbed until his lungs burned, until the sweat on his back had nothing to do with memory and everything to do with exertion.

But even here, even now, Thierry haunted him. The scent of crushed ferns underfoot reminded him of the scent Thierry used. The rustle of palm fronds sounded like his laughter.

At sunset, he sat on a jagged outcrop overlooking the sea and tried to write in his journal. The pages were water-warped, the ink smudged from last week's rain, but he scrawled anyway—half-formed thoughts, fragments of dreams, anything to quiet the noise in his head.

I don't know why I left.

Lie.

I don't know why it matters.

Lie.

He snapped the journal shut.

The next morning,he went into town.

The market was crowded, the air thick with the smell of fried plantains and diesel fumes from the fishing boats idling at the dock. He bought coffee he didn't want and drank it standing up, his back against a sun-bleached wall, watching the tide of tourists ebb and flow around him.

Then he heard it. A laugh. Bright, unburdened.

His head jerked up.

A woman stood a few feet away, her hair a sun-bleached blonde, her sundress fluttering in the breeze. She was grinning at something her companion said. Her face was open, easy. Alive. And she looked like Jolene.

The coffee turned to ash in Daniel's mouth.

Her vitals were stable when I left.

The memory hit without warning—sharp, surgical. A hospital room. The beep of a monitor. The way the light had caught the woman's hair, just like this, before the code blue alarm shattered the illusion.

She was fine. She was supposed to be fine.

His hand tightened around the cup. The cardboard crumpled, hot liquid seeping through the cracks, but he barely felt it.

He'd promised Jolene she'd be fine, and she'd died.

"Shit."

He dropped the ruined cup into a bin and walked away, his pulse a drumbeat in his throat.

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