Zane had not truly slept in weeks.
He tried to tell himself otherwise at first. He told himself that collapsing on the couch for an hour with the television still running counted as sleep. He told himself that closing his eyes while the city hummed outside the windows was rest. The truth was much uglier. Real sleep had not touched him. What he experienced instead were brief blackouts where his body simply shut down from exhaustion, only to jerk awake moments later with a violent surge of panic in his throat.
Every time he closed his eyes the memories came back.
They arrived in flashes that refused to stay in order. Willow standing across the room with that wounded expression she tried so hard to hide. The sound of Miles laughing. The quiet way Willow had withdrawn into herself in those last weeks before she vanished.
And the worst memory of all was the one that would not stop replaying. Willow looking at him that final time with eyes that had already made their decision.
