All Chapters of Wild Enough To Heal: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

32 Chapters

Chapter Twenty-One: Marry Me

POV: KaiI look at her, mascara gone slightly at the corner of one eye, her car still running in the driveway behind like she hadn't fully committed to staying."Please don't go."I want to tell her I have to. I want to tell her it's just a week, that I'll be back before she knows it. That none of this has to mean what it feels like it means standing here at midnight with her three feet away from me.None of it leaves my mouth."Why are you really here, Haley?" It's not about the birthday. Not really."She doesn't answer right away, and that's an answer on its own."I don't know," she says finally. "I just didn't want the last thing between us to be us sitting around a fire…" She stops, and in that split second I see her hesitating. "Like we're just friends who happen to know each other.""We are friends.""Are we?"I don't have a good response to that, so I don't give one."Go home, Haley." I say it as gently as I can manage, which isn't very gentle at all. "Nathan's waiting. And I h

Last Updated : 2026-07-20

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Whole Day Trying

POV: HaleyI wake up before Nathan does, sunlight already cutting through the blinds, and for a few seconds none of it exists. Not the proposal. Not the way I answered it.Then I remember exactly how fast I changed the subject.Nathan stirs beside me, one arm still slung over my waist, and I lie there watching the ceiling until he wakes up properly."Good morning." His voice is thick with sleep."Morning."He doesn't bring it up. Neither do I.We get through breakfast, get through him checking his phone twice for something architecture-related, and it's easy enough to let the morning carry us somewhere else, until he says it anyway."About last night." He sets his mug down. "You don't have to answer right now if you're not ready.""I think we should focus on school first." I say it faster than I mean to. "You've got real shine right now in the program. Everyone's talking about your last project. This can wait.""Architecture can wait. The opportunities will always be there." He looks a

Last Updated : 2026-07-22

Chapter Twenty-Three: What the Body Remembers

POV: Haley"I'm not actually.""Huh?" Nathan's brow pulls together. "Not what?"I stop walking and look at him, and something in me scrambles for a way out of the sentence I just let slip."Nothing," I say too fast, forcing a smile. "I was talking about the birthday."Kai's voice is still coming through the phone, small and tinny. "Haley? What's wrong?""Alright, Kai. Sure, I will.""Haley? Haley." Hearing my name from him does something awful to me."Bye." I hang up and hand the phone back to Nathan before Kai can say anything else, my smile still fixed in place.Nathan takes it, gives me a look I can't quite read, but doesn't push.We keep walking, and somewhere around the corner his mood shifts into something lighter, talking about an apartment he wants us to look at someday, a balcony big enough for actual furniture, how he pictures us five years from now, still arguing over whose turn it is to do dishes.I nod along. I don't hear most of it.---My phone is dry the next morning.

Last Updated : 2026-07-22

Chapter Twenty-Four: I Don't Remember

POV: NathanI get both arms under her before she hits the floor, and I'm already saying her name before I've even processed what's happening."Haley. Hey. Look at me."Nothing.My fingers find her pulse the same place they did last time, and I hold onto counting it because it gives my hands something to do besides shake.Avriel's already talking to the dispatcher, address repeated twice, voice pitched higher than I've ever heard it. Someone's cleared the folding tables out of the way. Someone else has turned the music off, and the silence that's left behind makes everything feel louder than it should.The paramedics come through the double doors nine minutes later. It feels longer."She has a heart condition." I say, before they even ask. "Her doctor is Reeves at Whitmore General. There's a specialist too—Okafor. I can get you numbers if you need them.""Good. That's good, keep going." One of them's already got a cuff around her arm, the other lifting her eyelids one at a time with a s

Last Updated : 2026-07-24

Chapter Twenty-Five: Run It Again

POV: HaleyNathan reads it over my shoulder before I can stop him. I feel him go still, and then the phone's out of my hand, the stream cut without a word."Nathan—""Later." He sets it face down on the tray table like it might start talking on its own. "Right now I just need you to breathe."I don't answer him, because I'm still turning the sentence over, the way you press a bruise just to check it's still there.A summer she went missing.I don't have a summer like that. I've had every summer of my life accounted for, and now some stranger with no face is telling me there's a hole in it I never noticed."It's probably nothing," Nathan says. "People online say things for attention.""Then why does it feel like something?"He doesn't have an answer, and before either of us can find one, there's a knock, and Dr. Okafor comes in with a folder tucked against his side, closing the door behind him.---He pulls the chair closer to the bed and sets the folder on his knee without opening it.

Last Updated : 2026-07-27

Chapter Twenty-Six: Whoever Gets To Stay

POV: Haley"Let go of her hand."Nathan says it again, quieter this time, like the volume was the only thing wrong with it the first time.Kai still doesn't move his hand from mine, his eyes fixed on me the whole time."Haley." The word comes out rough. "What exactly did he say?""The DNA doesn't match."I hear myself answer it the same way I have three times already, like repeating it might eventually make it sound less impossible."They ran it twice and it came back the same both times."Kai's grip tightens slightly around my hand before he catches himself and loosens it again."No."It's quiet. Automatic.The kind of answer people give before they've actually processed what they've heard."They're checking again, right?"I shake my head.For a second it looks like he's zoning out until he drags a hand over his face."Jesus, Haley."I don't think I've ever heard him sound helpless before.Nathan shifts beside the bed."Kai."I pull my hand back before either of them can turn this in

Last Updated : 2026-07-31

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Her Mother's Name

POV: KaiMy father doesn't raise his voice. That's how I know it's bad."You skipped the follow-up. Fourteen hours after closing the biggest deal of the quarter, and you skipped it.""I had a reason.""I don't care about your reason." He straightens a stack of papers on his desk that doesn't need straightening. "Your cousin Damian would've been on that call. He'd have handled the fallout, smoothed it over, made it look intentional. You made me look like I can't control my own son.""Haley collapsed. She was in the hospital.""And that's your problem how, exactly?" He looks at me for the first time since I walked in. "She has a boyfriend. She has a family. What she doesn't have is any claim on your time when I need you somewhere else."I don't answer that, because there's no version of the answer that won't make this worse."I need something from you," I say instead. "There's a woman, Renata Hughes. Used to work Haley's medical practice, handled her family's records for years, disappea

Last Updated : 2026-08-09

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Careful Enough to Warn Me

POV: HaleyI was right.That's the first thing that actually lands underneath it all. Not hurt, not yet. Just the strange, cold satisfaction of finding out the thing you suspected was true the whole time."She's watching," I say, mostly to myself, and Kai looks up at me."She knew exactly what I was going to find before I found it. That's the only way you send a text like this.""Haley.""No, think about it." I turn the phone toward him like he needs to see it again. "Don't go looking for the lake house. Not are you okay, not we need to talk, not even an explanation. A warning. She knows exactly what I've found.""Calm down.""I don't want to be calm." I set the phone down harder than I mean to. "How does a woman who hasn't shown up in my life for years know I'm getting close to something? She's watching me, Kai."He doesn't argue with any of it. He just watches me get it out, arms crossed loosely, patient in a way that would annoy me if I had the energy left to be annoyed by it.By t

Last Updated : 2026-08-15

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Boy Who Waited

POV: HaleyThe footsteps don't slow down.I grab his sleeve before I can think better of it, some part of me moving faster than the rest, and pull him through my doorway. He doesn't resist. I slam the door and throw the deadbolt, both hands shaking too hard to line it up on the first try.He flattens himself against the wall beside my coat rack, out of sight of the peephole, like hiding from someone at a stranger's door isn't new to him.We stand there breathing too loud in the dark.The footsteps reach my floor. Stop.A long pause, long enough that I start to think whoever it is has already gone past, and then a fist hits the door once, hard."Marcus." A voice I don't know, calm enough to make my stomach tighten. "I know you're in there."The boy beside me goes white. He shakes his head quickly, both hands raised. Don't answer.Ten seconds pass like ten minutes. Then the footsteps retreat, slow at first, then faster, all the way down the stairwell.He exhales like he's been holding i

Last Updated : 2026-08-16

Chapter Thirty: What I Can't Say Out Loud

POV: Haley"Whose door, Marcus?"He picks at a loose thread on his sleeve instead of answering right away."My mom's." Quiet, like saying it low might make it smaller. "Three months ago. He came to the house.""What happened?""I was in the pantry." He looks at the floor. "I heard her tell him I wasn't home. Straight to his face. Her voice wasn't even steady, and she still did it… she still lied for me."I sit with the image of it for a second—a woman standing in her own doorway holding a lie together while her son crouches behind canned goods listening to her voice crack."Does she know what's happening tonight? That he found you again, that you're here?""She knows it happens. She's always known." He finally looks up. "She just doesn't know where I ran to this time. I told her I was staying with a friend from work.""You haven't told her about me.""I don't know how." His hands go still on his lap. "I don't know if telling her about you just puts you in whatever this is. She spent y

Last Updated : 2026-08-22

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