NOAH

The world did not end with a scream or a crash. It ended with the sound of my brother’s voice, flat and clinical, cutting through the sterile air of the hospital corridor like a scalpel.

Nick didn’t look at me with pity. He didn’t even look at me with kindness. He just stood there, a pillar of cold white fabric and professional detachment.

The blood didn’t just leave my face; it felt as though it were being drained out of my very soul.

A terrifying, hollow cold started at the surface of my skin and moved inward, settling into my bones until I was certain I would never be warm again.

My stomach didn’t drop... it collapsed. It felt like something heavy had been resting on a shelf inside me for years, and someone had finally kicked the supports out from under it.

I was still standing, but the act of remaining upright required a conscious, agonizing effort.

I had to tell my brain to tell my legs to stay locked, to stay firm, even as the floor felt like it was beginning to liquefy beneath my shoes.

Around us, the hospital continued its indifferent machinery. Nurses moved with purpose, machines beeped with rhythmic cruelty, and the lights flickered with a hum that set my teeth on edge.

Everything was ongoing, as if the sun hadn’t just been snuffed out of my sky.

He was shot. The words echoed in my head in my own voice, small and pathetic. I said them again, trying to make them real, but they felt like a language I hadn’t learned yet.

It couldn’t be.

My Cassian couldn’t have been shot...

Maybe it was all a dream.

But I knew it wasn’t... The knot in my stomach was enough proof. The way my heart felt hollowed out reminded me that this was too real to be a dream.

I could barely suck in a breath. Everything felt too still...

"Can I see him?"

The words were out before I could think. They weren’t a request; they were a reflex, a desperate animal need to verify the wreckage.

Nick looked at me then, his eyes narrowing in that specific way he has when he find a question beneath the dignity of an answer.

"No," he said, each syllable clean and efficient. "He’s in a restricted ward. No visitors. Tripled security. It’s not possible."

He paused, a cruel smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. It was the look of a man who enjoyed being the gatekeeper of a truth I was too small to handle.

"You know, Noah," he began, his voice dropping into a low, mocking register, "it’s fascinating. For whatever you think you are to him, for how close you pretend to be, you were still the very last to know. By the time he got here, they were already losing him."

The words "losing him" hit me with the force of a physical blow.

Cassian could have been dead.

I might have never been able to see him again... To have felt his touch... To have stared at his hauntingly beautiful blue eyes... And tell him how I felt...

The collapsed space in my stomach found new, impossible depths.

Nick started to turn away, his coat fluttering like a shroud. "Go home... Or back to work. You won’t be able to see him today, or perhaps at all."

I didn’t decide to move. My body simply acted, driven by a desperation so pure it overrode every ounce of dignity I had ever managed to scrape together.

My hand shot out, grabbing Nick’s arm. I didn’t grab him carefully; I clamped down on the fabric of his uniform like a drowning man catching a piece of driftwood.

Nick stopped, his irritation immediate and sharp. "What are you doing? Let go."

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My legs finally gave up the fight, and I felt the hard, cold hospital floor rush up to meet my knees. I stayed there, kneeling at his feet, my hand still white-knuckled on his sleeve.

"Please," I whispered. It was a broken, jagged sound. "Please let me see him. I’ll do anything. I’ll leave right after. I just... please."

I hadn’t felt the tears start. I didn’t know they were coming until I felt the hot, salt-heavy tracks burning lines down my cheeks.

They were just there, unannounced and unpermitted, a public confession of a grief I wasn’t supposed to own.

Nick looked down at me, and for a fleeting second, the mask of the Great Surgeon slipped.

His expression became unreadable, less sharp, as he looked at his older brother falling apart on a linoleum floor in front of a dozen strangers all because of his supposed boss.

"This is not my jurisdiction," he said, though the bite was gone from his tone. "You’d need to speak to Charles Wolfe. Which, given your current state, would be a disaster."

"Please," I begged again. I didn’t release his uniform. I couldn’t. It was the only thing keeping me from dissolving entirely.

People were starting to notice. I could hear the whispers starting, the rustle of fabric as people paused to watch the scene.

I was a public embarrassment, a professional nightmare, and I didn’t care. I would have crawled through glass if it meant being in the same room as Cassian.

Nick saw the crowd.

He saw the scene. He let out a long, thorough sigh... the sound of a man surrendering to something utterly unreasonable.

"Fine," he hissed, grabbing me by the shoulder and hauling me up. "Stop this. Get up. Wait in the lobby. I’ll see what I can do before I regain my senses."

I sat in the lobby chair, my hands folded in my lap like a child waiting for a scolding. My face felt tight where the tears were drying, a mask of salt and shame.

I couldn’t stop the replay.

Three days of calling a phone that never answered. Three days of sending messages to a man who was lying in a pool of his own blood while I sat in meetings and talked about contracts.

I thought about the visit to the villa, the way Miss Chen had looked at me with that careful accuracy. He hasn’t been back.

I thought about the picture in my drawer. Cassian’s face, younger and happier, looking at a man who wasn’t me.

And all the while, he was here. He was here, being cut open, being stitched back together, and I was an hour away, representing his interests as if the world were still turning on its axis.

There are personal things I need to take care of, he had told me. I hadn’t pushed. I never pushed.

I was too afraid of being the person who asked for more than they were given.

And now, the "more" I had been denied was the chance to hold his hand while his heart almost stopped.

Nick appeared twenty minutes later. He led me to a small, windowless room and handed me a bundle of light blue fabric. "Change," he commanded.

"Why—"