Page 162 of Hidden Echoes

He was real. Zane was real.

I told him he was the realest thing I ever had. I meant it. God, I meant it with every piece of me. I felt it.

But…

Had I only wished him into existence?

Had I crafted him out of my need for something good, someone safe?

I remembered his eyes. How they softened when he looked at me. How his fingers shook the first time he held my hand. How his mouth pressed against mine like he was scared I'd disappear.

But if that wasn’t real…

Then what was?

Maybe that’s why he was so perfect. Because I created him. Maybe I gave myself the kind of love I thought I deserved and just—believed it.

The realization numbed me so completely that I lost my grip on reality again. I slipped into that place—the void—where even the voices couldn’t reach me. Silence swallowed everything.

I didn’t notice when I left the cage. Didn’t register Paulina’s hands guiding me, dressing me in her twisted idea of what acceptable looked like. I didn’t fight. I didn’t speak. I just… let her. Because something inside me had shut down. Like a switch flipped. Like whatever part of me that used to scream had finally gone still.

The mansion was old. Dusty. Echoing with memories I didn’t recognize. I smiled when we arrived. As convincingly as I could. But inside, something in me was dying.

Because worse than the pain of loss is realizing there was never anything to lose.

The voices around me seemed distant.

For a second, I swore I heard Zane shout my name. I turned around.

And I saw him.

His ghost.

His desperate eyes.

He looked at me as if he felt me giving up on him. As if somehow, I was giving up on myself. I blinked.

Closed my eyes. Breathed. But when I opened them, he was gone.

I stopped speaking. Stopped trying to piece it together.

The truth had begun to rot inside me. I never left the basement. I never traveled. I never had a brother who survived or a sister who smiled when I walked in the room. I never kissed someone on a Paris street. I never wore his clothes or curled into his chest on rainy nights.

I never loved.

I invented it all.

I invented him.

I told myself he was the realest thing in my life. And maybe… he was. Maybe that’s the saddest part of it all.

I spent hours staring into space, whispering arguments to the voices in my head, fighting back the images that threatened to break me.

But no matter what I did…

I couldn’t get him out of me.

Zane. His ghost. His warmth. His voice.

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