Page 75 of Carrick
They didn’t talk about the fact that Carrick had followed me. That he hadn’t tried to fix me. That he just… stayed. Silent. Steady. Solid, in a way I wasn’t used to.
I didn’t expect them to bring it up. I wasn’t even sure Iwantedthem to. But the quiet didn’t feel like respect. It felt like a waiting room. The kind with flickering lights and bad coffee and the constant, gnawing awareness that when the door finally opened, whatever came next might break you.
There were no answers. No reassurances. Just time, stretching longer and thinner with every heartbeat, like a string pulled too tight.
Carrick passed me a mug of coffee that morning. He didn’t say anything—just walked over, warm ceramic in one hand, the other tucked into his hoodie pocket. Our fingers brushed as Itook it, and he lingered there for a second too long. Not to crowd me. Not to coax me. Just… to be.
I didn’t thank him. Didn’t drink it either. I just held it in both hands like it could ground me, keep my shaking thoughts from spiraling out the window.
Now, I sat curled on the wide sill before the bay window in the front room, legs drawn up, back pressed against the frame. The glass was cool against my temple. Outside, the wind made the trees shift in slow-motion, their limbs swaying like dancers moving to a song I couldn’t hear.
And all I could think was—is he seeing this too?
Is Rayden out there somewhere, looking up at the same sky? Does he know I’m here? Does he know I’d burn the city to the ground to find him?
Or was he already?—
I couldn’t finish the thought. I couldn’t put a period on the sentence that started withwhat if he’s—because if I said it out loud, if I even dared to complete it, it would make it real.
The guilt curled tighter in my chest, sharp and familiar. A fist around my throat.
Because the last voicemail he left me—months ago now—had been short and breathless. He’d tried to sound brave, but I heard the tremble. Heard how he rushed the words. Heard the pause mid-sentence, like someone might’ve been listening.
“Hey, Bels. Just—checking in. Everything’s good. I’m good. Just wanted to hear your voice. I’ll, uh—I’ll try again later.”
I hadn’t called him back.
I’d been mid-shift at the library. Overdue books. A toddler screaming in the corner. A local author demanding a display. I told myself I’d text him later.
I didn’t. And now here I was—wrapped in borrowed quiet, tucked into a fortress built from muscle, grief, and trauma, surrounded by people trained to kill if it came to that.
And Rayden? God, I didn’t even know where he was. Didn’t know if he was cold. Or hurt. Or dead in some forgotten alley. I wrapped both hands tighter around the mug and pressed it to my chest like it could hold me together.
But it didn’t. Nothing did.
I pressed the heel of my hand into the center of my chest, hard, like maybe if I applied enough pressure I could keep the grief from spilling over. Keep it contained. Keep it from crawling up my throat and cracking open my voice, turning into some feral sound that would ruin the fragile calm in the house all over again.
Because that was the risk, wasn’t it?
Losing control. Losing face.
Letting them see what I was really holding back—that I was unraveling slowly, piece by piece, heartbeat by heartbeat.
“Quinn’s checking in today,” Niko had said earlier in that calm, clipped tone he used when trying to sound in control. Like he was confirming a shipment, not announcing a call that might tell me whether my brother was alive or?—
“We’ll gather in the den when he calls.”
Just that. No further explanation. No softening of the words, like it was just another box to tick off the list. Like it was just information. Like it wasn’t my goddamn heart on the line. And I hated them for that. For the calm they wore like body armor. The way they absorbed fear and turned it into strategy. For the quiet nods and impassive faces and the absolute faith they seemed to have in the process. Like it had never betrayed them before.
They had practice with this kind of pain. I could see it in the way they stood. The way they moved. They’d lived this, survived it, buried it deep and learned how to weaponise the scar tissue.
But me? I hadn’t. Not like that. I hadn’t known how to live with my fear walking around in someone else’s body. To carrythe hollow weight of it. To feel like half my soul was out there in the dark with no flashlight.
I didn’t trust the process. I didn’t trust anything anymore. Especially not time. Because time had become cruel—stretching when I needed it to move, collapsing when I tried to breathe. Mocking me with every slow tick of the clock. Whispering in silence that if Rayden were still alive, I would’ve known by now.
I was still sitting in the hallway, on that little wooden bench beneath the arch that led toward the living room. My legs were folded beneath me, my spine locked straight, a book cracked open on my lap—some novel I couldn’t name, a paragraph I’d been staring at for over an hour without taking in a single word. I hadn’t turned the page. The text blurred. Doubled. My eyes kept scanning the same sentence and coming up empty. My hands were numb where they clutched the cover, fingertips pressed tight into the edges like I could anchor myself there.
But all I could think about was the call.
