Page 188 of Carrick
I thought he might argue. That he might try to tell me I didn’t mean it. That I was just in pain, and he could outlast it. But he didn’t. Slowly, he reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Held it towards me, offering it like a supplication.
A keychain, burned and melted, hardly recognizable. As I stared at it, I saw the letters BELL imprinted on it, the rest unintelligible. It took me a moment to realize what it said. What it meant. Bellamy. It had said my name. It… it had been Rayden’s.
Perhaps the last thing that could physically tether him to this world. To me. I reached out for it, but stopped, my hand trembling uncontrollably. I couldn’t bring myself to hold it. Not yet.
He nodded again and walked over to my nightstand. He opened the top drawer and set the keychain inside before closing it again. And then he turned, walked to the door, and let himself out without another word. No final glance, no touch, no parting breath. Just the sound of the door closing behind him.
I stood there for a long time after Carrick left, arms wrapped around my ribs like I was trying to keep something inside from falling out. My body trembled with emotion that had no shape, no name, just sharp edges that scraped along my insides with every breath.
Grief. Rage. Guilt. Loneliness. Love. Loss. They lived there now. All of them. Not separate. Not clean. Just tangled up in one another, threaded through the hollow places where hope used to live.
And I didn’t chase after him. Because some heartbreaks weren’t meant to be held through. Some didn’t belong in anyone’s hands but your own. Some had to be survived alone, in the dark, with no one there to soften the sound of you falling apart.
I couldn’t sit. My body wouldn’t let me. I was too full of something frantic and burning and untamed, something that paced beneath my skin and demanded motion. So I moved. Barefoot across the hardwood, I wore a path into the floor. Five steps from my dresser to the window. Five steps back again. Over and over until my knees ached and the arches of my feet stung. I moved like I could outrun it; like grief couldn’t touch me if I stayed in motion.
I stopped only once—at the window. The glass was cool against my forehead, a sharp contrast to the heat twisting beneath my skin. Outside, the porch light still glowed, a soft yellow smear against the dark. But Carrick wasn’t there. He’d done what I asked. He was gone. And I hated him for it. But I hated myself more. Because I’d told him to leave. I’d looked him in the eye and pushed him away.
And yet, some part of me—a quiet, ruined part—had wanted him to stay. To argue. To fight for a space I didn’t know how to give. But I didn’t know how to be held in the state I was in. I didn’t know how to be looked at like something fragile when I felt like a grenade with the pin already pulled.
I didn’t want comfort. I wanted silence. I wanted to come undone without witnesses. To scream until my throat shredded and not have to translate it into words. To grieve without having to explain the shape of it to anyone else.
I turned from the window with movements that felt borrowed, crossed to the nightstand, and opened the drawer with fingers that no longer felt like they belonged to me. The keychain was there—half-burned, melted beyond recognition, its shape warped and edges jagged, but the ghost of my name still clung to the metal like a prayer scorched into its bones.
I reached for it slowly, carefully, like it might still carry heat. Like it might bite my skin and brand me with the truth I couldn’t seem to outrun. I closed my hand around it like I couldkeep him inside it somehow—my brother, my blood—and then I sank. I folded in on myself and collapsed to the hardwood floor, bones grinding against wood, ribs aching with the force of impact, as if the grief had detonated inside me and left nothing standing.
The tears came, not with the fury of earlier sobs, but like something sacred unraveling—slow, silent, and absolute. They traced the slope of my cheeks and disappeared without sound, like rain on a grave. I couldn’t scream anymore. My throat was too raw, my body too hollow. I buried my face in my arms and let the silence consume me, let the sorrow seep into my bloodstream like poison.
I breathed it in like smoke, tried to exhale it like fire, but every inhale burned and every exhale tasted like the word I couldn’t stop hearing: RPG. I tried to tell myself it was fast, that Rayden didn’t suffer. But the truth echoed in my body like a second heartbeat. He was gone. And all I had left was this piece of twisted metal and the echo of a man’s voice who’d tried to save him—and hadn’t.
I gripped the keychain like it could turn back time, like holding it tight enough might turn it into a relic, a miracle, something sacred enough to undo what had been done. But nothing changed. It didn’t glow. Didn’t bring him back. Just pressed harder into my skin, the warped edge carving deep until pain and grief fused into one unbearable weight. The sharpness dulled, giving way to a vast, soundless void—so empty it swallowed breath, thought, everything. A hollow so complete, it didn’t even echo.
My body stayed curled on the floor, unmoving, pressed so close to the boards I thought I might disappear into them. The cold beneath me should have grounded me. It didn’t. Time unraveled. Minutes spilled into hours, or maybe the other way around. I lost the order of things. Lost myself.
Eventually—when I couldn’t tell whether it was dusk or dawn—I shifted. Not out of peace. Not out of strength. But because the floor had felt like a tomb, and I wasn’t ready to bury myself with him. My limbs protested as I pushed upright, trembling from the weight of everything I hadn’t said, everything I hadn’t saved. My hoodie sleeves slid over my hands as I crawled toward the bed—not for rest, because rest was a fantasy, but for softness. Something to remind my body it hadn’t turned entirely to stone.
I pulled the blanket over me even though I wasn’t cold. It wasn’t for warmth. It was camouflage. A child’s instinct. As if hiding could take me back to before—before the explosion, before the voice, before I learned what it meant to lose half my heart to fire and ruin.
I turned to the wall, curling into myself like vanishing might somehow dull the edge of it. No tears came—not from calm, but from sheer depletion. Just ruin. Just ash. Carrick hadn’t returned, and I didn’t want him to. Not yet. My ribs still echoed with the scream I never got to hear, and Rayden’s face burned behind my eyes, etched in the orange glow of everything we lost. Space was the only thing I could stand. Silence, the only mercy. I needed to grieve without eyes on me—because some pain doesn’t want comfort. Some wreckage needs to tear through flesh and bone alone, in the dark, where nothing can soften it.
The house didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. It felt like it was waiting. Like it understood that something sacred had broken and didn’t dare intrude. And I lay there in the quiet, wrapped in a blanket that didn’t soothe, gripping a keychain that couldn’t resurrect, with only the truth for company—truth that carved its name into my chest and refused to let me forget.
He was gone. And I was still here.
And nothing would ever be whole again.
36
Carrick
“You knowshe hasn’t eaten, right?” Maddy’s voice cut through the kitchen like the edge of a blade dulled by exhaustion. She didn’t look up as she said it—just stood by the sink, her hands wrapped tight around a chipped ceramic mug. Steam rose from it, curling lazy and untouched into the air.
I sat at the table where we’d gathered for dinner, elbows on the wood, forearms streaked with old soot and bruises I hadn’t bothered to check. Across from me, Sully scrubbed a hand over his face and blew out a slow breath, one leg bouncing beneath the table like he was keeping time with some clock no one else could hear. Jax had his laptop open but wasn’t typing, his fingers hovering over the keys like he forgot what they were for. Deacon had taken over watch hours ago. Which left the rest of us here, floating in this purgatory of too-quiet footsteps and the sound of Bellamy’s door staying closed.
Two full days.
That’s how long it had been since she’d spoken a single word to any of us. She hadn’t come down. Hadn’t asked about food. Hadn’t even turned on a damn light. I’d stood outside her door more than once, my hand raised, knuckles ready to knock—andI hadn’t done it. Not because I didn’t want to. Because I didn’t deserve to.
“I left a plate outside her room this morning,” Maddy said, her voice too calm to be neutral. “Still there.” Sully cursed under his breath and reached for the bottle of whiskey we hadn’t put away since the night Rayden died. He didn’t pour a shot. Just held the bottle, like maybe it could answer a question none of us had the guts to ask out loud.
