“Zane, can you hear me?”

They said that time heals all wounds. But what if the wound never closes? What if it only deepens?

Zane and I were never supposed to happen. I didn’t need saving, and he didn’t need anyone. But somehow, we collided. Maybe it was the silence between us that spoke louder than anything else. Maybe it was the way he’d stare at the world like it didn’t matter, and I’d pretend not to notice, pretending my heart wasn’t breaking every time.

It was supposed to be temporary. A fleeting connection. I was never one to give in so easily, especially not to someone like him. But when he was around, the air shifted. The silence no longer felt like something to endure—it felt like something I could almost understand.

I never told him I loved him. Not out loud. I kept it buried, hidden behind carefully constructed walls, just as I always had. I didn’t need to say it. He would’ve never understood it anyway.

But he was my escape. And I was his.

And then, like everything else, he was gone.

“Zane, please. Just stay. Please.”

But I never said that. I never begged, never showed how badly I needed him to stay. Because I didn’t know how to. Because I thought if I said the words, everything would break. I never let anyone see what was inside, not even him.

The day I lost him, something inside me shattered. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry, not in front of anyone. I stayed silent, like I always had. Because no one could know how much he had meant to me. No one could know that the weight of losing him was too much to carry.

He didn’t die because of me. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. But I can’t shake the feeling that I failed him. I should’ve said something, done something—anything—to stop it. But the truth is, I was never enough to stop him from walking away.

“Zane… can you hear me?”

I whisper it to myself, late at night, when the world is still, and the pain is loudest. But even then, I don’t let anyone see it. I don’t let anyone know the depth of the void he left behind. No one sees the tears I hide or the pieces of myself I’ve lost along the way.

I keep telling myself it’s okay. That I’ll move on, that this is just a phase, that life will keep going. But it doesn’t. Life keeps slipping through my fingers, and nothing feels real anymore. He was my reality, my only truth, and now that he’s gone, I’m left questioning everything I thought I knew.

I go on with my days, keeping my head high, pretending that I’m fine. But every step I take feels like I’m walking further away from everything that mattered.

And in the quiet moments, when I’m alone with my thoughts, I ask again—“Zane, can you hear me?” But I already know the answer. The world is silent. And so am I.

It's been seventy-six days since he died.


Seventy-six days since I last saw his face, heard his voice, felt his presence in a world that now feels too bare, too hushed.


Seventy-six days since I became the girl everyone whispers about.


"Poor thing, she hasn't spoken since the accident."


They think I don't hear them. But I do.


I hear everything. Everything except him.


The rain crawls down the hospital window in trembling lines, just like the night it happened. I lift my fingers, tracing patterns in the condensation. It's the only thing I can move these days: my hands, my mind, my grief. The rest of me—the parts that mattered—are buried under the weight of his absence.


They say I was lucky. That I should be grateful.


I try to remember what that feels like.


The nurse enters, moving too carefully like she's afraid I'll break.


No. No, I can't. I haven't heard from him since that night. Since the last time I saw him—standing in the rain, hands in his pockets, head bowed under the weight of something I didn't understand.


I should have grabbed his arm. I should have made him stay.


The nurse keeps speaking. Her voice is soft, muffled, like a sound travelling through water. Everything feels like that now. Like I'm drowning, except my lungs keep forcing me to breathe.


I stare past her, past the white walls, past the machines that beep softly in the background. I stare out the window at a world that still moves, still turns, still breathes—like nothing happened.


I know that Zane isn't gone. He's everywhere.


In the flickering hospital lights that buzz at odd hours of the night.


And in the spaces where silence is too loud.


The first time I woke up, I thought he'd be here. Sitting in the chair beside my bed, waiting for me to open my eyes.


But the chair was empty. Just like his seat at school. Just like his side of the bed. Just like the world, now that he isn't in it.


I knew I was alone in this grief, in this unbearable, suffocating quiet.


I knew that if I had just said something that night, he might still be alive.


I am a girl who let him go. A girl who now exists in the spaces where he used to be. A girl who cannot feel her legs, cannot feel her heart, cannot feel anything except the absence of the boy who once made her feel everything.


I exhale slowly and let my fingers slip from the window.


No one knows what happened that night. No one knows that the last thing I ever said to him was nothing at all.


She doesn't mean to say it like that, but it's all I hear.


And even if he used to once upon a time, now it's been forever since I ever heard him speak, or even look back at me.


Chapter 1 - Prologue