Chapter 300

Chapter 300


TAMARA

ONE WEEK LATER

Time was moving.

Cars still passed. People still laughed. The sun still rose and set like nothing had happened.

But I was not moving with it.

I was still there.

Still stuck on that road, knees scraped raw against the asphalt, lungs burning from screaming a name that no longer answered back. I was still watching the car tumble—metal folding in on itself like paper—watching it roll once, twice, before landing upside down with a sound that haunted my bones.

And then the fire.

God, the fire.

It swallowed everything so fast. I remember running. I remember my heels breaking. I remember clawing at arms that were not his, begging, screaming, fighting like an animal.

Let me go.
Let me burn with him.
Please. Please. Please.

They never did.

There was always someone holding me back. Always hands wrapped around my waist, my arms, my shoulders—strong hands, apologetic hands, hands that did not understand that all I wanted was to be where he was.

All I wanted was his arms.

All I wanted was to disappear into him the way fire had.

Even when the medics came. Even when they shouted orders. Even when they dragged what was left of him from the wreckage, my mind refused to move forward.

I stayed.

I screamed until my throat bled.
I cried until my eyes swelled shut.
I ran until my legs gave out.

And still—it was not enough.

It dragged me back eleven years in a single, merciless pull.

Back to the first time he vanished.

Back to the first time I learned what it felt like to lose him through a screen, through headlines, Back then, I had collapsed in front of a television, watching his name crawl across the bottom of the news like it was nothing more than information.

They said he was dead then too.

The pain now was familiar.

But sharper.

Deeper.

Heavier.

This time, I had touched him. Loved him. Lived in him. Let him stitch together pieces of my heart I had broken.

I had let him mend me.

That was the cruelest part.

Eleven years ago, whatever I had left of myself shattered when he disappeared. I learned how to breathe around the hole in my chest, how to exist with the ache, how to pretend the world wasn’t gray and hollow without him. I survived, but I was never whole.

Then he came back.

And I let myself believe again.

I let him touch me, love me, look at me like I was something precious instead of something broken. I let him stitch me together with soft words, rough hands, promises whispered in the dark. I let myself grow roots around him.

And now—

Now he was gone.

Again.

Only this time, it wasn’t just my heart that broke. It was my body. My mind. My soul. Everything collapsed in on itself like that car on the road.

I couldn’t say his name.

Every time it rose to my lips, my throat closed up, tight and burning, like my body refused to accept it. Saying his name meant admitting he was real. That he existed. That he was gone.

So I didn’t.

Fabian and Ian handled everything.

They identified what was left of him. They spoke to the doctors. They listened to words I couldn’t hear. They told me he had burned too badly, that there was nothing recognizable left, that they knew it was him because of his watch, because of blood tests, because of science and facts and things that didn’t matter.

I didn’t go in.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t look at a body that didn’t look like him and pretend it was the man who held me, who kissed me, who promised me forever with that dangerous certainty in his eyes.

So I stayed behind.

I stayed in his room.

I wore his clothes until they clung to me, until they smelled like my vomit and tears and sweat. I emptied my stomach over and over again, my body rejecting food, rejecting reality, rejecting a world where Isaiah didn’t exist.

People came.

They hovered.

They whispered.

They cried for me, like their tears could replace mine.

Ian offered to let me stay with him. He stood in front of me, eyes red, voice careful, like I was something fragile that might shatter if he spoke too loud. If I could still feel, maybe I would have laughed. Maybe I would have reminded him how much he despised me once. How much he wanted me gone.

But I felt nothing.

Not then.

The day of the funeral arrived without my permission.

The church was full.

Black everywhere. Black clothes. Black veils. Black expressions. The air was thick with incense and grief and words that meant nothing. People sobbed openly. Others stared ahead, faces blank and respectful.

I sat in the pew like a statue.

The priest spoke.

His voice rose and fell, gentle and practiced, like he had done this a thousand times before. Maybe he had. Maybe to him, this was just another death. Another ceremony.

To me, it was the end of everything.

I didn’t hear him.

My ears rang with silence so loud it hurt.

Ian stood when it was time for the speech.

My eyes lifted because the movement pulled them there, not because I wanted to look.

He cleared his throat, fingers tightening around the paper in his hand, though he didn’t need it. His voice broke on the first word.

“Isaiah was… and will continue to remain my brother.”

The church went still.

“He was blood before blood,” Ian continued, swallowing hard. “And even in death… he doesn’t stop being that.”

His words blurred after that. I watched his mouth move. Watched his chest rise and fall. Watched him crumble in a way I had never seen before.

When he finished, people stood.

One by one, they walked up to say their goodbyes.

To a coffin that held someone I could not accept was inside.

I stayed seated.

I didn’t move.

Not when they whispered condolences. Not when they touched my shoulder. Not when the church slowly emptied until the echoes of footsteps faded and only silence remained.

That was when she came.

Lucy.

Noel’s mother.