Page 136 of The Beautiful Dead

No breath.

No movement.

No life.

The doctor murmured something—time of death—but I barely heard it. One by one, they left. The nurses. The doctor. Arti. Until it was just me.

And Domino.

He hadn’t said a word the entire time. Hadn’t moved from his place at my side. Silent. Watching. A sentinel standing between me and whatever storm was waiting beyond these walls.

I should’ve felt something.

I should’ve cried. Or screamed. Orsomething.

But my face stayed blank. My hands remained steady. My chest didn’t ache.

I turned away from the bed, my gaze landing on the window, on the endless rain streaking down the glass. The view outside blurred into nothing, distant and unreal.

I didn’t remember leaving the room.

Didn’t remember stepping into the hallway or the way the walls seemed to close in, pressing against me, suffocating. Didn’t remember walking through the front doors of Hollow Pines, the night swallowing me whole.

But I must have.

At some point, I was back in the SUV. Domino was driving, and the city appeared in front of us. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching the rain slip down in thin, winding trails.

Still, I felt nothing.

The SUV stopped.

The rhythmic drumming of the rain on the roof was the only thing my brain could process, a steady, numbing beat thatfilled the silence. Domino didn’t speak. He just sat there, staring through the windshield, watching the droplets slip down the glass as it started to mist over, his breath barely visible in the cold air.

I didn’t think.

My fingers curled around the door handle, and before I even knew what was happening, I was outside, stepping into the downpour. Cold water seeped into my clothes and clung to my skin, but I barely noticed. I just walked.

And walked.

With no real direction and no thought behind each step. My body moved on instinct, pulled by something deep inside me, something ancient and hollow. Some part of me must have known where I was going, even if my mind didn’t.

The towering, ornate archway of my favorite cemetery emerged from the darkness like a specter, looming under the dim orange glow of the streetlights. I rarely used this entrance—preferred to lose myself among the graves, to wander through the headstones and let the weight of the world slip away.

Here, among the dead, was the only place I ever felt at peace.

Well—almostthe only place. The other was in Domino’s arms, but even that had its limits. Even that had an end.

The dead never left.

They didn’t whisper false promises or pretend to be something they weren’t. They didn’t judge. Didn’t have expectations. Didn’t disappoint.

Theywelcomedme.

My sins, my twisted perversions, my darkness—it all meant nothing here. Because, in the end, we were all the same. Flesh and bone and breath, all reduced to dust and memory.

Death was the great equalizer. The only certainty in this pointless existence.

What purpose did money have once your lungs stopped drawing air? What meaning did love hold when you weren’t there to hear the sobs of those left behind? The world didn’t stop turning just because you ceased to exist.

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