Chapter 172 "I'm Coming, Sophie."

Chapter 172 "I'm Coming, Sophie."
The sentence left me in pieces. Each word felt like it took something else with it.

“The only person that matters to me now… now that my mum is gone… is also gone.”

I let my body go.

I didn’t try to stand. I didn’t try to reach for the phone. I just sank sideways until my shoulder and then my cheek met the carpet. The fibers pressed into my skin. My tears soaked into the expensive weave in dark, spreading spots. The phone screen kept lighting up a few feet away, throwing little flashes of white across the floor.

"The mother of my child is gone." The words formed somewhere inside me, and something about them felt final. As though saying them aloud had given the grief a shape I could finally understand.

Then, almost impossibly, I pushed myself up. I didn't know where the strength came from.

One second, I was lying there, barely able to move, and the next, my palms were pressing against the floor as I forced myself upright. My legs trembled beneath me, but they held. I stood there swaying, breathing hard, staring at nothing.

How was I standing?

I didn't know.

Maybe it was adrenaline. Maybe it was the body's final rebellion against surrender. Or maybe this was what people called terminal lucidity, which is a last, strange surge of strength before the body finally gave in.

Whatever it was, I didn't question it. I didn't have the luxury... because she was gone.

And suddenly, the only thought in my mind was that I couldn't let her disappear completely.

I pressed a trembling hand against my chest.

"Sophie..." her name broke somewhere in my throat. I closed my eyes. "I promised I'd protect you." My voice cracked. "And I couldn't even do that."

For a moment, I couldn't breathe. Then I whispered the words that hurt more than anything else I'd said that night. "You were supposed to grow old with me."

My eyes filled.

"You were supposed to annoy me when we were seventy. You were supposed to complain about my terrible habits and steal the blankets and tell me I was still too stubborn."

A broken laugh escaped me, barely recognizable as laughter. "I was supposed to die first." The room blurred through my tears. "Not you." I swallowed hard, trying to keep myself standing. "God, Sophia... I don't know how to be here without you."

And that was the truth I'd been running from. I didn't want to learn. I didn't want another morning. I didn't want a life where she existed only in photographs and memories. I wanted her.

And if there was somewhere beyond this life where she was waiting for me, then for the first time, I wasn't afraid of what came next.

I was only afraid of how long I'd have to wait.

Then, as if on clue, the pressure in my chest peaked.

It wasn't pain anymore. It was something heavier, something crushing, as though an invisible weight had settled over my ribs and was slowly squeezing the life out of me. My vision narrowed until the room around me became nothing more than a tunnel of darkness, the edges swallowing everything in their path.

I tried to breathe.

I couldn't tell if I was actually breathing or simply remembering what breathing was supposed to feel like.

The headache that had been waiting behind my eyes suddenly exploded, white and absolute. A violent ringing filled my ears, drowning out every other sound. My fingers went numb. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to break through my chest, each beat coming faster, harder, and then strangely uneven.

I reached for the edge of the desk.

Missed.

My knees buckled, and I hit the floor hard enough to feel the impact, but somehow, even that seemed distant.

For a strange moment, everything became peaceful. Not happy, not comforting. Just... peaceful.

The kind of peace I'd always imagined death might bring.

The noise disappeared first. Then the panic. Then even the pain seemed to drift farther away from me, as though my body was slowly disconnecting from everything I had ever known.

And I wasn't afraid.

That was the strangest part.

I should have been terrified.

I was too young to die. I had things I hadn't done, words I hadn't said, questions I hadn't asked. I had a future that was supposed to stretch ahead of me, filled with years I had always assumed I'd get to live.

But suddenly, none of that seemed important.

Because she wasn't in it.

Sophia was gone.

And without her, the future I'd once been so determined to reach suddenly felt meaningless.

What was the point of waking up tomorrow if she wasn't going to be there?
What was the point of breathing if every breath was going to remind me that she couldn't take hers?

Maybe this was what people meant when they said they were ready to die.
Maybe death wasn't always something you fought.
Maybe sometimes, after losing the one thing that made life feel worth living, you simply stopped fighting it.

My eyes burned, but I couldn't tell whether I was crying anymore.

'I'm coming, Sophie baby.' The thought was strangely comforting.

For the first time since I'd lost her, I didn't feel like I was being left behind. I felt like I was going to her.

Then my heart slammed violently against my ribs continuously, then it seemed to stumble.

A sharp, crushing pain tore through my chest, so sudden that whatever peace I'd found vanished instantly. My body jerked. I tried to inhale, but the air wouldn't come. My throat tightened as I clawed uselessly at my shirt, desperate for oxygen.

My vision flickered: Dark — Light — Dark again. The room tilted violently beneath me.

I heard something buzzing somewhere nearby. My phone again.

Her name was probably still somewhere inside it. The thought hit me harder than the pain. I reached for it with trembling fingers, but my arm refused to cooperate. My hand collapsed against the carpet.

The buzzing continued. Once. Twice. Then it sounded impossibly far away.

My heartbeat became a frantic, broken rhythm inside my chest. I knew something was terribly wrong.

And yet, beneath the terror, there was still that strange calm. I had already lost her. Maybe this was simply my body finally admitting it couldn't go on without her.

My eyes closed.

The last thing I felt was the rough carpet against my cheek and the distant, useless buzzing of a phone that would never again show her name at the top of the screen.

Then everything went black.