NOAH
The world didn’t just stop; it shattered.
The clipboard in my hand felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, my fingers going numb as the plastic edges dug into my palm. What? Cassian? The na echoed in the cavernous, unfinished space of the construction site, bouncing off the concrete pillars like a death knell. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt like they had been filled with lead, and the bright Spanish sun suddenly felt cold, biting and sterile.
"Where is he? Is he okay?" Alex’s voice broke through the ringing in my ears. He sounded urgent, focused, but his voice seed to be coming from miles away.
"I don’t know the details," the worker panted, his eyes darting between us. "Just heard it was serious. They took him to Hospital San Rafael. And there was soone else in the car, another man. They took him too."
My heart didn’t just stutter; it stopped. A vacuum opened in my chest, sucking all the air out of the room. Cyan. It probably was Cyan.
The panic wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a scream. It was a quiet, suffocating blanket that wrapped around my throat and squeezed. I clenching my hands into fists, my short nails biting into my palms, trying to use the physical pain to anchor myself to the ground before I floated away into a full-blown crisis.
Alex turned to , his expression unreadable behind his professional mask. "Noah, we should... "
"I need to go," I interrupted. My voice sounded thin, reedy, like a recording played at the wrong speed. "I need to, " I couldn’t even finish the sentence. My body was already pivoting, my legs moving with a chanical desperation that my brain hadn’t authorized yet.
"I’ll drive you," Alex said, grabbing my arm. His grip was firm, grounding. "Co on."
I didn’t argue. I didn’t have the strength to be independent. I followed him to the car, stumbling slightly over the uneven gravel of the site, my mind a chaotic loop of please be okay, please be okay, please be okay, please be okay.
The drive to San Rafael was a blur of high-speed turns and blurred cityscapes. I stared out the window, my forehead pressed against the glass, seeing nothing but the cracked screen of my phone in my mind’s eye. Every red light felt like an eternity; every honk of a horn made flinch.
Then, we saw it.
Traffic slowed to a crawl as we approached a bend near a road that led to an estate. Blue and red lights strobed against the ancient stone walls of the nearby villas. A tow truck was positioned in the center of the road, its winch groaning.
And there, in the middle of the debris, was the car.
Or what was left of it. The sleek, bright-colored, powerful machine was unrecognizable, a mangled corpse of twisted tal and shattered safety glass. The front end had been obliterated, pushed back into the cabin. I saw the dark, unmistakable sar of blood on the remains of the windshield.
My stomach dropped through the floor of the car, through the asphalt, into the dark earth below. No one survived that. No one could survive that. The dread beca a physical weight, a boulder sitting on my chest, crushing my ribs until I had to gasp for every shallow breath. I pressed my hand against the window, my fingers trembling so hard I could hear them tapping against the glass.
How? Cassian, how?
"Noah, don’t look," Alex said softly, but I couldn’t turn away. I watched the wreck until it disappeared behind us, the image burned into my retinas. My heart was pounding so hard it was a rhythmic pain in my neck. I felt like I was dying right along with him.
...
Hospital San Rafael was too bright. It slled of floor wax and industrial-grade disinfectant, a scent that had always signaled the end of sothing in my life. Alex parked the car and was out before the engine had fully died, coming around to open my door.
I stepped out on legs that felt like they were made of water. I followed him into the lobby, my eyes darting around the sea of people, the white-coated doctors, and the humming machines.
Alex took charge at the reception desk. "We’re looking for Cassian Wolfe. He was brought in from a car accident."
The nurse didn’t even look up from her monitor at first. "Are you family?" She asked with a monotonous voice.
"Business associates," Alex said, his voice commanding. "Please. We need to know his status."
The nurse typed sothing, her face impassive. "He’s in Room 304. Third floor. But..."
I didn’t wait for the ’but.’ I was already sprinting for the elevators. I heard Alex call my na, but the sound was swallowed by the roar of my own pulse.
I didn’t care. I didnt want to.
All I wanted was just to see him. To see the piece of shit that had my heart pounding like a drum... Because no matter how much I hated him... The thought of seeing him dead or half-dead, made my guts twist in such a way that I struggled not to throw up.
The elevator ride felt like an age. When the doors finally chid, I burst out, scanning the numbers on the walls until I hit 304.
The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open, my breath hitching in my throat, prepared for the worst, prepared for tubes, for machines, for the silence of a man who would never bark another order at again.
And there he was.
Cassian wasn’t lying down. He wasn’t hooked up to a ventilator. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back straight, his shoulders tense. He was talking. He was moving.
The relief hit like a physical blow to the solar plexus. It was a tidal wave that washed away the ice in my veins, replaced by a sudden, overwhelming heat that made my eyes sting. My knees buckled, and I had to grab the doorfra to keep from sliding to the floor. He’s alive. Oh God, he’s alive.
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