Chapter 240: Finn
The day I met Madeline, my knees went weak. Not figuratively—literally weak. I stood there useless, heart pitching around my ribs, and that night I jerked off in secret thinking of her and grinned like an idiot for a week. An angel, I thought. Nothing else fit.
Yeah, she was hot; that’s what hit first. But after? In the days that followed? After that I started picturing… life. With her. Her asleep against my chest, me running out for her groceries and letting her teach me not to burn a pan. Us at the movies, whispering dumb commentary; us at the kitchen table, playing cards and accusing each other of cheating. My favorite smell used to be mint. Now it’s vanilla, like her hair when it catches the wind. My favorite color used to be red. After the pier, I never want to see red again. Red is blood slicking the stretcher, dripping off her fingers, coming out of her body by the liter. Purple and blue aren’t safe either—her lips, ribs, throat. Those colors live in my head and make me sick. Food tastes like cardboard. I push plates away. I'm never hungry anymore.
After the pier I went home and cried in the shower for an hour, and I haven’t smiled since. A whole week of just... not.
It feels like it's my fault. What if I’d talked to Sloane earlier? What if I’d cut it clean instead of letting it drag? Would she have left Mads alone? The question is a hook I can’t pull out. Every time it catches, I bail out of whatever room I’m in and step into the shower fully dressed, crank the water, and let it drown the sound coming out of me. Charlie and Liam used to follow. Two days ago they stopped. They know the ritual. If she dies, I’ll never forgive myself. Never.
When I heard she was dating the twins, it stung. I’d been nursing the slow-burn fantasy—give me time, let me make her laugh, teach me to cook, and maybe she turns toward me. Maybe she'll fall for me. But I’ve never wanted anyone’s happiness as much as I want hers. So I swallowed it and was glad for her. Honest. I just want to be in her life. If she still has one.
Now we wait. The twins don’t text. Don’t call. They ping Charlie maybe every twenty-four hours or more with bone-dry updates. The last time I saw Madeline, she was basically dead—no pulse, no blood left, bones wrong everywhere, flatlining while the defib did nothing. I don’t know if she’s alive. I don’t know if the twins are hoping or grieving right now. I don’t know anything except that the house is wrong without her; even the raccoons look like they miss her.
I’m in the shower again now, clothes on, forehead against tile, water too hot. I do it because the roar makes it impossible to tell how much of the tears are mine. This time I'm in here because I found a post-it of hers by the oven. Finn, you dummy, don't forget to turn it off :-).
The door opens. Liam steps in and sits on the other side of the stall, hoodie, jeans, shoes—all of it. He doesn’t say a word. Just leans back, closes his eyes, lets water flatten him.
Charlie comes in a minute later, socked feet soaking in a second. She slides down the wall and tucks her knees up. Her mouth’s doing that wobble. I haul her into my side and she feels small and shaking; Liam’s arm hooks around both of us.
“I miss her,” I say, and my voice breaks clean down the middle.
“Me too,” Liam says, hand heavy on my shoulder.
Charlie nods hard, like agreeing will hold the world together, and tucks her face against my shirt. The three of us sit there in the steam and the pound of water, clothes going heavy, shoes filling, crying without keeping score, because the water keeps the math from us and there’s nothing else left to do but this.
And wait.
Charlie’s phone is faceup on the bathmat, buzzing through the steam. We all go still. She fumbles it up with wet hands, glances at me, at Liam.
“Jake,” she says.
We kill the water. The silence after is a punch—just tile drip and our breathing. She puts it on speaker.
“Hello,” she manages.
“Hey,” Jake says. Sandpaper and static. Nothing else.
I can’t take it. “How is she?”
A beat. “Finn?” he says, like lining me up in his head.
“And Liam,” Liam adds, voice low.
Jake exhales. “We don’t know yet. She hasn’t… she hasn’t woken up.”
Charlie shakes so hard the phone trembles. “It’s been a week.”
He doesn’t answer that. The drip from the showerhead counts time we don’t have.
“Can we come?” Liam asks. “Should we?”
“It… might be necessary to come soon, yeah.”
My heart just—drops. Come soon. For what? To say goodbye?
“I’ll let you know,” Jake says. Another scrape of silence. “I’m calling to tell you Nick woke up.”
All three of us freeze. My throat locks.
“He broke a lot of bones in his face,” Jake goes on, voice gone clinical, like he’s reading it off a chart because the other way is too hard. “Lost an eye. They had to do a trach—his vocal cords were… ruptured.”
Ruptured. I look at my hands, then at Liam’s, then at the memory of Jake’s—split skin, blood in the lines. How do you even—? I know who. He did. And I don’t care. Some ugly part of me thinks good.
“They’ll take him to jail as soon as he’s stable,” Jake says.
“What about you?” Charlie blurts, small and fierce.
A breath. “We’ll see.”
Nobody talks. Somewhere on his end a monitor chirps; somewhere on ours a drop hits the bathmat loud enough to make me flinch.
“I’ll text you the hospital address,” he says finally. “When you come, ask for surgical ICU. They’ll point you where to wait.”
“Okay,” I say, because somebody has to.
“Okay.” The line clicks dead.
We stare at the wet screen until it lights again with an address, black letters on white. My chest hollows out. Liam tips his head back against the tile and swallows. Charlie sets the phone down like it could break, wipes her face with her sleeve, and I pull her in, because if I don’t hold something I’m going to break, too.
We don’t turn the water back on. We just sit there, soaked clothes heavy on our skin, listening to a phone buzz with a place we’re afraid to go and more afraid not to.