LOGINChapter 20 – The Mirror The motel lamp wouldn’t stop buzzing. It was this cheap yellow thing bolted to the wall, the kind that flickers even when you don’t touch it, like it’s tired of existing. The light kept jumping, shadows crawling up the ceiling and sliding back down again, like something was moving when it shouldn’t be. Every time it flickered my stomach tightened, like my body was waiting for something else to turn on by itself too. Julian was still on the bed. Shirt off. Fresh gauze taped crooked over his ribs. The bleeding had stopped, finally, but his skin looked wrong. Grayish. Washed out. Like the light was draining him instead of showing him. He hadn’t moved since he said it. “I’ll give him the company.” The words were still hanging in the air. Heavy. Sitting between us like a third person in the room. I stood there frozen, halfway between the bed and the bathroom door, arms wrapped around myself so tight it almost hurt. Like if I squeezed hard enough I
The car wasn’t safe anymore.I knew it. I didn’t think itI knew it in my bones, like when you suddenly realize you’re about to throw up and it’s already too late.The headlights caught the next green sign on the highway.REST AREA – 2 MILES.The letters glowed too bright. Fake-bright. Like they were laughing at us. Like the road knew something we didn’t and thought it was funny.Julian was breathing wrong.Not loud. Not fast. Just… wrong.Too shallow. Like he was scared to breathe all the way in. Every inhale sounded careful, like it hurt, like it cost him something he didn’t have enough of anymore.The bandage around his ribs was dark again. I could see it even in the low dash light. Blood soaking through slow, stubborn, spreading in ugly patches that wouldn’t stop. His hand stayed pressed there, fingers sticky, knuckles white. He hadn’t said a word since he crushed his phone and threw it out the wind
.The highway just kept going.Like it didn’t care about us at all.An endless black strip under the tires, stretching forward forever, the headlights barely touching it, like we weren’t really on the road, just floating over it. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t even know where we could go.So I just drove.Julian was slumped in the passenger seat, his head tipped against the window, eyes half closed but not asleep. Not really. His breathing sounded wrong. Shallow. Catching. Every breath dragged in like it hurt, like glass scraping his lungs.The bandage around his ribs was soaked through. The white cloth I’d torn from his spare shirt was now dark red, sticky, blooming wider every time I looked at it. Blood had dripped onto the leather seat beneath him. Little pools. They flashed when headlights from passing cars hit them, shiny and wet and too real.I kept looking at him.Over and over.
Black, Not dim, Not shadowed it was total darkness The warehouse lights died like someone reached up and flipped a switch on the entire world, like reality itself had decided it was done watching. One second there was harsh fluorescent glare, buzzing overhead, burning into my eyes and the next there was nothing. No depth. No edges. Just absence. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. My ears rang. Not from the gunshot there hadn’t been one yet but from the projector. From the sound it had been blasting into the space. My own voice, torn out of context and flung back at me, still echoing off the concrete walls even after the image died. It lingered, stretched thin, distorted by the acoustics, like the building itself didn’t want to let it go. I felt sick. Like my body didn’t belong to me anymore.
. The drive felt like drowning. Not the violent kind no splashing, no thrashing. The quiet kind. The kind where the water closes over your head and everything goes muffled and slow and heavy, and you realize too late that you should have fought harder. Julian drove like he was trying to outrun something inside himself. His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles had gone white, veins standing out like cords under his skin. His jaw was locked, muscle jumping every time he swallowed, like his body was grinding its teeth for him. The BMW ate up the highway, headlights carving twin tunnels through the dark, engine humming low and aggressive beneath us. The radio stayed off. No music. No news. No static. Just the sound of the engine and the hitch in Julian’s breathing sharp, uneven, like he was holding something back that wanted out. A scream. A memory. A name. I sat in the passenger seat, bare legs sticking to the leather, the hem of his T-shirt riding up my thigh
Julian came back just after noon.The front door opened with that same familiar creak, the one I’d heard a thousand times growing up, the one that usually meant groceries or work calls or normal, boring life. Today it sounded wrong. Too loud. Too sharp. Like the house itself was flinching before he even stepped inside.I was still on the stairs.I hadn’t really moved since Marcus left.My legs were tucked under me, numb and prickling, arms wrapped tight around my knees like if I let go I might come apart. Mom had gone back upstairs after he walked out. Her door had slammed so hard it rattled the picture frames in the hall. No words. No confrontation. Just the sound of her crying again—muffled through walls, angry and raw and endless, like something wounded that refused to die quietly.Julian saw me immediately.He stopped in the foyer, keys still in his hand, body going still in a way that made my chest tighten. His eye







