Page 58 of Seven Lost Summers
I swipe at my face again, but the tears keep coming. My cheeks sting from it, my head throbs, and my chest feels caved in, crushed under the weight of everything I can’t fix.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her.
Her face, pale and still. Her fingers limp in mine. Her eyes not really seeing me. The way her body just gave out, as if something inside her snapped and there was no time to catch it. No way to stop it.
I watched her chest go still. Watched the color drain from her face. Felt the silence settle when no one pressed down on her chest anymore. When the paramedics looked at each other and didn’t need to say a word.
I had never screamed like that before.
I didn’t even know I could.
I was the one who called her mom.
That call will haunt me forever. I could barely breathe, couldn’t force the words out. I just kept saying her name. And on the other end, her mom broke.
And now I’m here, my fingers twitching at my sides, desperate to do something, but all I can do is stare at the fucking door.
The house is quiet.
Too fucking quiet for what’s about to hit it.
My stomach churns because there’s no right way to say it. No version that won’t split the ground open.
Bianca is gone. And it’s on me to hand that truth to them, wrapped in broken pieces and silence. To take the memory of her laughter, her fire, all that fucking light she carried, and crush it with three words.
Bianca is gone.
The words claw at me, tearing me apart before I can even force them out.
My hand hovers near the door, but I don’t knock. Because the second I do, this stops being the worst day of my life and becomes the worst day of theirs.
They don’t know yet.
Inside that house, Bianca still exists. In their world, she’s still alive. And I’m about to end that.
I close my eyes for half a second, but all I see is her face. I swallow hard, my throat burning. She was everything to them, to me, to us.
She held all our jagged edges together and never once asked for anything in return. And now I have to tell the boys who loved her that she’s never coming back. There’s no right way to break someone’s heart.
I drag in a breath that barely makes it past my ribs and lift my hand to knock.
The sound echoes too loud, cracking through the stillness like a warning shot.
The second my knuckles leave the wood, I want to take it back. Swallow it down. Pretend I was never here.
But the door swings open anyway. And there they are, Nate and Theo.
Side by side. Smiling.
Their joy slams into me like a punch.
Nate’s smile falters first, his brows pulling tight.
Theo’s halfway through some smartass comment, but it dies the second he sees me.
I don’t even realize the tears are still falling until I catch the way their expressions shift.
I swipe at my face, but it’s too late.
