Chapter 167

Chapter 167
I let myself scan the room before I look at her. Really look.
She’s lying on her side, curled in like a child. Her hair used to be thick, wavy and wild like something out of an old photograph, but now it clings to her scalp in limp, brittle strands. Too thin. Too lifeless. I can’t see her face yet, but I can see enough.
She’s small.
Not just physically. Small in presence, in energy. Like life has been slowly drained out of her, breakable. Like the lightest touch might shatter her.
Mrs. Phillips steps forward, gently calls her name like she’s afraid it might echo too loud in a room full of ghosts. “Monica... You’ve got a visitor,” she says, voice warm. “You won’t believe who’s come to see you.”
My chest tightens. She stirs under the blanket, shifts slowly....like her bones might betray her. Then she turns her head and—
Fuck.
It’s her. She looks… hollowed out. Paler than I remember. Her features too sharp, but I know her. I know her even like this.
The moment she sees me, something flutters in her expression...shock, disbelief, maybe even fear. Her mouth parts. “Adam?”
It’s barely a whisper. Paper-thin.
I nod once. “Yeah.”
Tears instantly well up in her eyes, and before I can brace for it, she’s tossing her blanket aside, trying to sit up, scrambling to get out of bed. Her hands tremble.
“Wait..Monica, no,” Mrs. Phillips says gently, hurrying over. “Stay in bed, you don’t need to... It’s okay.” Then she turns to me. Her eyes flicker between mine, asking me without words to help, to be here, to do the thing I’ve spent most of my life trying not to.
So I move. One step. Then another.
It feels like walking into a fire.
I’m standing beside her now, close enough to feel the cold radiating off her skin. Mrs. Phillips smiles softly, places her hand on my back for a second too long. “I’ll let you two catch up,” she says, but her gaze lingers on me. “I’ll be close by if you need anything.”
Then she’s gone.
And just like that, I’m alone with her. The one woman who taught me silence could be violent. I feel her touch before I register it. Her hand, light and dry, resting on my arm.
I freeze. Glance down.
She’s bandaged. A strip of gauze wraps around her thin wrist, the edge stained faint pink.
She doesn’t let go.
“It’s really you,” she whispers. “My boy.”
My stomach knots. Those words… they’re foreign. A language she never spoke when it mattered.
“I just wanted to check in,” I manage. My voice sounds rough, scraped raw by emotion I’m not ready to feel. “Can’t stay long.”
“No, don’t say that,” she pleads, her fingers tightening like she thinks she can anchor me here. “Please… Adam, don’t go. Not yet. I..I have so much to say. So much to make up for.”
I laugh, but it’s humorless. It’s a broken sound.
This is the most coherent I’ve ever seen her. No vacant stares. No muttering to herself. No slipping into rooms like a ghost and vanishing for days. She’s present.
It’s ironic. Now that she’s closer to the edge than she’s ever been… she’s finally clear.
“What could you possibly want to say to me?” I ask.
She looks up at me, her eyes rimmed red and full of something that looks a lot like regret. “You probably hate me,” she says quietly. “And you should. I… I deserve that.”
Then she lifts her hand again...shaky, hesitant—and cups my cheek.
I should pull away. My body begs me to. But I don’t move. Her palm is warm. Thin-skinned and trembling.
“ You two used to look so much alike,” she murmurs. “You’ve grown into such a handsome man.”
My jaw tightens like a trap snapping shut. “Don’t,” I snap. “You don’t get to talk about him. You don’t have the right.”
She nods. Doesn’t argue. “I know. I know, Adam. There’s not a day I don’t wish I could go back. I...I would do everything differently, I swear I would.”
Her voice breaks. Then she does too.
She covers her mouth with her hand, the tears spilling down her cheeks in silence. Her whole body shaking like she’s trying to cry out decades of rot.
“I wasn’t okay,” she gasps out. “I’m not saying that makes it right. I just, God..I gave up.”
Her words drop like weights between us.
And something inside me… caves. Or cracks. I don’t know the difference anymore.
Because I remember it all.
I want to scream. Or leave. Or collapse.
But instead, I stand there, barely breathing, and feel everything I thought I buried start clawing its way back up through my ribs.
Maybe I should’ve stayed gone.
But I didn’t.
And now I don’t know if I’m here for her, Or if I’m here to finally bury her in the past where she’s always belonged.
She’s still crying. Her breath shudders in and out of her, and it sounds too loud in this whitewashed silence. Her eyes are bloodshot, skin so pale it’s translucent, as if grief and time have scraped her raw. As if guilt has thinned her to the bone.
“I killed him,” she says through sobs, voice hoarse, choking.
Her words are shards. They slice straight through me, all the way down to where I’ve kept it buried, the night, the screaming, the ambulance, the stillness. The hollow after.
Liam.
I close my eyes. Hard. But it’s too late. The memories rise anyway. The smell of blood.The sirens.
“I killed my baby,” she cries. “He’s gone… he’s gone, and it’s my fault.”
I want to scream at her to shut up. To not say it like that. To not rip the wound open like I haven’t spent years suturing it shut with silence.
But I don’t say anything. I just stand there, frozen.
Her sobs crack into the air like glass shattering. Her whole body shakes, trembling like she’s about to disappear. I don’t move. I don’t reach for her. I can't. It would cost me too much, and I’ve already bled too much for this woman.
I’m not whole enough to carry her guilt too.
And this? This won’t be good for me. I feel it in my skin. My bones. That familiar ache creeping in like mold, dark and wet, clinging to the walls of my chest. It’ll swallow me if I let it. I can’t afford to walk out of here empty. I have to be present...for Layla. For when she comes back to me. I promised her I'd wait.
I swallow hard, chest heaving like I’ve been running.
“I’ve gotta go,” I say, backing away, voice barely mine.
I mean to leave. I mean to bolt. To run before she can pull me under again.
But she grabs me.