Nicky's POV
The silence pressed on him like a vice. Nine days clean and every hour dragged like glass under his skin.
He couldn't stop moving — his knee bounced, his fingers tapped, his jaw ached from clenching. The crash had passed, but what came after was worse: a gray fog that swallowed everything. Nothing tasted right, nothing felt right.
Eliana's voice lingered in the back of his skull, softer than the static. A promise of a future together.
He had clung to those words through the sweats, through the trembling nights, through the panic that clawed him awake. They weren't a promise she wanted to make — he knew that — but she'd said it, and he held it like oxygen. If he made it through, maybe he hadn't ruined everything.
But right now, nine days in, his body screamed otherwise.
