Page 205 of Sage Haven
Breathing.
It was enough to break me.
Relief hit like a sucker punch—violent, unforgiving and sharp enough to steal the air from my lungs.
My knees gave out before I could stop them.
I sank to the damp concrete, the room swallowing us whole, my arms locking around her with a ferocity I couldn't temper.
I held her like she might dissolve in my hands, like something precious and irreplaceable. Like something I was too late to protect.
And maybe I was.
Maybe I always had been.
She’d only been gone twenty-four hours.
One rotation of the earth.
One day.
But when I looked at her—at the pale stretch of her skin, the deep bruises blooming along her throat and wrists, the distant emptiness in her eyes—it was like she’d been gone for a lifetime.
Like a ghost wandering back into a body that didn’t fit anymore.
She wasn’t just lost.
She was gone.
And yet, she was still breathing.
Somehow.
Her pulse fluttered beneath my fingertips, faint but steady.
I pressed my palm flat against her spine, anchoring her to me, whispering silent pleas I wasn’t even sure who I was begging—God, fate, the universe, myself.
Please let her stay.
Please let me fix this.
I tucked her closer. Tighter.
My cheek rested against the crown of her head, breathing her in. The faint scent of blood and cold sweat. And beneath it—her.
The smallest trace of her.
Still there.
Still fighting.
Even if she didn’t believe it anymore.
“You’re so smart, Sage,” I murmured into her hair, the words rasping out like broken glass. “And you’re so damn strong.”
I swallowed hard, feeling the sting in my throat.
For a long moment, she was still. Too still.
