Chapter 4

White-hot pain explodes from under my right shoulder blade and rips through every nerve I've got. I can feel the cold metal sinking deep. Tearing muscle. The kind of pain that turns the world to ice.

Time stops.

The fury drains out of Caleb's face. What's left is pure, gaping shock.

His fingers spring open on instinct — but the knife stays buried in me. Blood spreads across my shirt. Fast. Too fast.

Zoe's sobbing cuts off mid-breath. Her mouth hangs open. She doesn't move.

"Grace…?"

His voice cracks. He stares at his own bloody hand. Then at my face — the color already draining out of it — and for the first time, something breaks in his eyes.

Not anger.

Fear.

I look up at him. There's one more thing I want to tell him.

That's for the bullets. Last time. Now we're even.

But the cold is spreading too fast. My tongue won't work. My knees fold.

"Grace!"

The sound that rips out of him isn't human. He lunges. Catches me before I hit the floor. His hands hover everywhere at once — over the wound, over the knife, over my face — afraid to touch any of it.

His arms are shaking. All of him is shaking.

"Get a doctor! Call an ambulance — NOW!"

He's roaring at frozen faces in the doorway, eyes blown wide and red. The cold, untouchable Caleb is gone. What's left is just a man drowning.

I come back to the smell of antiseptic and the soft beep of a monitor.

My shoulder is thick with bandages. The pain throbs in slow waves. But underneath it — deeper, heavier — is the thing I already know. That sinking, rotting weight inside my body.

It's really happening.

The room is quiet. Through the door, I hear voices kept low. Tense.

Caleb and Zoe.

"I'm asking you one more time, Zoe. Did she cut you with that knife? Or did you do it yourself?"

His voice is barely above a whisper. The kind of quiet that comes right before a storm levels a house.

"Caleb… you don't believe me? How can you not believe me? She's always hated me — you know that — she's always hated that you—"

"I believe what I see. And Grace has done a lot of stupid, ugly things. But she has never turned a blade on herself. Not once. Not ever." His voice drops lower. Colder. "Zoe. Don't lie to me. If I find out you did — I'll kill you myself."

A small, stunned breath. She's never heard him like that before. She knows it.

His footsteps walk away.

I lie there in the dark and listen to him go.

Something hot and stupid pricks behind my eyes.

He believed me. For one second back there — he actually believed me.

A laugh climbs up my throat. It comes out broken.

Too late, Caleb. About five years too late.

In my last life, you said those exact same words — I'll kill whoever hurt you — except by then, the person you wanted to kill was me.

I turn my face into the pillow. The bandage on my shoulder is already soaking through. I can feel the slow, hot trickle of fresh blood. I can feel the deeper rot spreading through my kidneys.

Two weeks. Maybe less.

I'm not wasting any of it crying over a brother who might have loved me, in some other version of this life.

I have to go.

Before he comes back. Before he looks at me with those eyes again. Before I'm stupid enough to start hoping.

I push myself upright. The room tilts. My shoulder screams.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek until I taste copper. And I reach for the IV line.

Goodbye, Caleb.

This time — I really mean it.