Chapter 1: The Day Everything Broke

Aaron remembered the sound before anything else.

Not the crash itself—he was asleep then, curled into the backseat with his jacket folded beneath his head—but the sudden, violent silence that followed. A silence so complete it felt wrong, as though the world had forgotten how to breathe.

When he woke, the car was no longer moving.

The air smelled sharp and unfamiliar, like burnt rubber and something metallic. His head throbbed. His ears rang. For a moment, he didn’t understand where he was or why the night looked broken—why the streetlights seemed tilted, why the sky pressed in at an unnatural angle.

“Mom?” he whispered.

No answer.

He pushed himself upright, his small hands trembling. His father was slumped forward in the driver’s seat, too still. His mother sat beside him, her head turned slightly toward the window, as if she had been watching something pass by just before everything stopped.

“Mom?” Aaron said again, louder now, panic rising in his chest.

Still nothing.

That was when fear truly arrived—not all at once, but creeping, filling the spaces where answers should have been.

The sirens came later. So did voices. Hands lifted him gently from the car. Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and told him everything would be okay.

Aaron did not believe them.

The hospital smelled like disinfectant and grief.

He sat alone on a narrow chair, his feet barely touching the floor, watching adults whisper to each other with careful expressions. No one met his eyes for too long. No one spoke plainly.

When a woman finally knelt in front of him, her voice was soft, practiced.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Aaron stared at her, not fully understanding the words that followed, only the way they settled into his chest like stones.

Gone.

Both of them.

In a single night.

The days that followed blurred together.

There were questions he couldn’t answer and clothes that didn’t feel like his. There were relatives he barely knew, voices heavy with pity, and rooms that echoed when he walked through them. His parents’ house became unfamiliar, every corner filled with reminders of things that would never happen again.

Aaron stopped asking when they were coming back.

He already knew.

Evelyn arrived on the third day.

She stood in the doorway for a long moment before stepping inside, as if bracing herself. Her eyes were red, her face drawn, grief written into every line.

When Aaron saw her, something inside him broke open.

She was his mother’s best friend—the woman who used to laugh too loudly at dinner, who brought homemade bread on Sundays, who smelled like lavender and warmth.

He ran to her before he could stop himself.

Evelyn dropped her bag and knelt, catching him in her arms as he clung to her like he might fall apart otherwise. She didn’t tell him to be strong. She didn’t rush him.

She just held him.

“Oh, Aaron,” she whispered into his hair. “I’ve got you.”

For the first time since the accident, he cried.

That night, Evelyn sat beside him on the edge of the bed, smoothing his hair back gently.

“You’re going to stay with us for a while,” she said softly. “With me and Lily.”

Aaron nodded, though his chest felt tight.

Lily.

He knew her vaguely—a girl his age with sharp eyes and a quick tongue. She had never been unkind to him before, but she had never been warm either.

The thought of a new house, a new room, a new life felt overwhelming.

“What if I mess up?” he asked quietly.

Evelyn’s heart clenched.

“You won’t,” she said. “And even if you do, you won’t be alone.”

Aaron stared at the ceiling long after she left the room, listening to a house that wasn’t his, surrounded by a future he didn’t recognize.

He didn’t know it yet, but that night marked the beginning of everything—the distance, the longing, the love that would wait patiently in the background of his life.

Loss had brought him here.

Love would teach him how to stay.