Page 3 of The Sound of Forever
Today was all about Ophelia. It’s probably because she’s the only person I truly miss. The kind of missing that settles in your bones and refuses to let go.
Yesterday’s question is still gnawing at me. What do I love most about her? After digging through my pathetic excuses for answers, I’ve realized something—I’m a selfish prick.
Not a single thing I listed was about her. It was all about me. How she made me feel. How she propped me up. How she endured my chaos.
How fucked up is that?
And maybe that’s why I let her go. Deep down, I knew she deserved better.
The truth? I haven’t changed much. I’m still selfish, still a mess, still the guy who would drag her down if I held on too tightly. But this second chance at life? It’s shifted something. I want to see her happy. Really happy. Smiling in a way she never did when she was with me.
And Haydn, her fiancé . . . Well, Haydn made that happen. I saw it. The way he looked at her, like she was the center of his universe. Like she deserved everything good and pure in this world. I wanted to hate him, to ruin him, but I couldn’t. He loves her the way I never could. She deserves that kind of love and more.
I was a selfish prick. Still am, probably. But at least now I can admit it. Maybe that’s step one. Or maybe it’s just another excuse. Who the fuck knows if this is a step for the better or if this will throw me back into the hell I used to live?
ChapterEight
Keane
DayTwenty-One
Three weeks. Twenty-one days in this place, and every one of them has chipped away at whatever was left of me. I’m hollowed out. Stripped bare. This kind of exhaustion isn’t something you sleep off—it seeps into your bones, your skin, your soul. Therapy doesn’t just dredge up the past; it drags you under with it, makes you relive it. Makes you feel it all over again. Every mistake, every cruel twist of fate, every goddamn regret. It’s not just that I remember them—I’m drowning in them.
And my body? It’s a stranger to me now. There was a time when movement felt like freedom. Walking, running, even the simple act of standing upright—it all came effortlessly, a thoughtless rhythm I never appreciated. Now every step is a negotiation; every breath a confrontation with the betrayal of my own flesh. I can’t even sit without feeling the echoes of what used to be, like some cruel phantom is whispering in my ear, reminding me of everything I’ve lost.
Then there’s the silence. God, the silence. It’s deafening. It creeps in when the lights go out, when the world goes quiet, and all I have left are my thoughts. My failures stretch out like an endless hall of mirrors, each reflection uglier than the last. The questions—they don’t stop. They coil around my brain like vines, squeezing tighter and tighter. What if this is it? What if I can’t put the pieces back together? What if the best version of me is already gone, and this is all that’s left—a shell, broken and useless?
They say healing is a process. A journey. But this doesn’t feel like healing. It feels like unraveling. Like I’m picking at the seams of everything I thought I was, only to find that there’s nothing underneath.
And yet, there’s this flicker—tiny, barely there, but enough to keep me breathing. The thought that maybe tomorrow might be different. Maybe I’ll wake up and feel something besides this ache, this emptiness. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe this is just who I am now.
Broken. Waiting. Wondering if there’s any way back.
ChapterNine
Keane
DayTwenty-Five
My mother died a couple of years after the accident that left me in a coma. Four years later, and it feels like I’m only just beginning to acknowledge her absence—not just her death, but the tangled mess of everything left unresolved between us. I can’t stop wondering: if I’d woken up sooner, would things have been different? Could we have stopped circling each other, stopped sizing each other up like adversaries in a battle neither of us knew how to win?
She was a hovering force my entire life and yet, she neglected me. She liked control. A control Rowan didn’t bend to, but I did. He never cared about earning her approval, her love. I craved it. I wanted to believe it was possible. I wanted to believe a better version of her was possible. She tried to make sure I stayed in line—her line.
And with Ophelia? She hated her. Mother despised what we had. She tore at us with words designed to break, calling her names that still burn in the corners of my memory. When Philly told me she was pregnant, my mother twisted it into a weapon. Claimed the baby wasn’t mine.
But I knew the truth.I knew.And still, I tried to keep my mother happy, to calm her, to keep the peace in a war that could never be won. It was a constant battle between her expectations and my reality, and the only casualty in that war was Philly.
Philly, who gave and gave while I stood there, too afraid to draw a line, too afraid to lose my mother’s approval. All I ever gave her were excuses and apologies. Philly deserved more—more than me, more than this mess I handed her and called a life.
And now, my mother’s gone. No final words, no closure, just this hollow space where the fight used to live.
Would it have been better? Would she have finally accepted Philly, the baby . . . me? Or would we have just found new ways to tear each other apart?
Rowan refuses to tell me what happened between Mom and Philly while I was unconscious. He says it’s not worth dredging up, that it won’t change anything now. But isn’t that the worst part? The not knowing? The wondering. The regret.
The therapist says I have to decide if the truth matters to me—if I need to dig it up, hold it in my hands, and make peace with it. They say this process is about facing reality, about learning how to carry it instead of letting it crush me.
But am I brave enough to ask Rowan? Am I brave enough to confront the only person I have left in this world? Or will I stay here, trapped in the questions I’m too afraid to answer?
