Page 129 of Vows of Ruin

Nothing. I just sit there. Breathing, but not really. Eyes open but not seeing. Present, but gone. The door opens again. Torque’s voice is low and angry at someone who isn’t in the room. “We’ve got a partial trail. Riot’s pulling feeds. Elias is working on tracking his last pings from before he cut the tracker out.”

Max doesn’t respond. His entire focus is on me, on keeping me tethered. Wrecker appears next, leaning in the doorway. His voice cracks when he tries to lighten it. “Hey, Wren. You’re okay. We’re here. He’ll be okay. We’ll get him home.”

But the words slide right through me. I hear them. I just don’t feel them.

Doc returns briefly, checking my pulse, my pupils, the set of my jaw. “She’s not unconscious. This is a freeze response. Keep grounding her. No sudden movements. No loud noises.”

Hugo whines and climbs halfway onto the bed, laying his massive head on my lap. His weight is warm. His breathing is steady. Somewhere… far away… I register it. But it’s distant. Max presses a kiss to the side of my head, whispering something quiet and desperate, a prayer without words.

Time passes, I don’t know how long. Minutes. Hours. A lifetime.

More updates come in hushed tones. Riot is saying they found something about a factory district. Elias, cursing under his breath about wiped cameras. Torque punching a wall outside the door. Margot is fighting tears while she strokes my hair. Through it all, Max holds me. He never moves. Never loosens his grip. Never stops whispering my name like it might pull me back.

But I don’t come back. Because the world isn’t whole. And neither am I. I have Max. But there is a Liam-shaped hole tearing through my chest, gaping, bleeding, pulsing. A place inside me that went dark the moment he walked out that door. A place that doesn’t know how to be alive without him. A place that feels incomplete.

Time stops meaning anything. There are no mornings. No nights. No meals. No conversations. There is only the bed. The ceiling. The quiet weight of Hugo pressed against my leg. The faint shift of the mattress when Max changes positions beside me.

People come and go. Riot’s heavy footsteps, Elias whispering updates, Doc checking my pulse, Margot brushing hair from my face, Torque cursing under his breath as he paces. They don’t reach me. Not really. Everything is muted. Blurred. Distant. Like I’m watching the world through thick glasses.

They speak to me. Touch me. Hold me. But it doesn’t land. My eyes stay open. But I don’t blink much. I don’t move unless someone moves me. I don’t speak. My soul feels somewhere… else. Somewhere dark. Somewhere far from here.

Through it all, Max never leaves. Not once. He sleeps beside me. He eats beside me. Sits on the bed with his hand wrapped around mine like he’s holding the last thread tethering me to this world.

I feel the warmth of him. I hear the sound of his voice but I don’t feel him. Not the way I used to. Not the way he deserves. Until one night, or maybe morning, or maybe hour forty or ninety, Max shifts beside me with a ragged, broken breath.

Not the normal kind from exhaustion or frustration or fear. A different sound. Wet. Splintered. A sob. Then another one. The next hits like it tears something inside him wide open. He curls into me, forehead pressed to my shoulder, body shaking.

“Wrenley…” His voice cracks so hard I swear something in him breaks. “Sparrow, please—please come back to me. I don’t—” his words splinter. “I don’t know what to do without you. I don’t know how to—fuck—how to breathe when you’re not here.”

Max doesn’t cry. He hasn’t cried in years. Not since his father’s funeral. Not when he was stabbed and beaten bloody for refusing to join the old Black Serpents. Not even when he thought he was going to die the night my parents had him kidnapped.

But he’s crying now. For me. Because of me. His tears hit my collarbone, warm, real, alive. Something in my chest snaps. Like a fault line giving way. Like a bone setting wrong. Like a scream cracking through concrete. I gasp. A sharp, broken sound that rips out of me without warning.

Max jerks back instantly, hands flying to my face. “Sparrow? Sparrow—hey---look at me. Look at me—”

My eyes focus. Actually focus. His face is right there, wrecked, red-rimmed, terrified. Suddenly the world isn’t underwater anymore. It’s bright. Too bright. Painfully bright. My breath drags in too fast and too sharp and too real. “Max…”

It comes out like a scrape of air.

He chokes on another sob, cupping my cheeks with both hands. “Yeah. Yes. I’m right here. I’m right here, Sparrow.”

Everything hits me at once. The bed. The room. Hugo is pressing against my legs. Max’s shaking hands. The ache in my spine. The dryness in my mouth. The hollow pounding behind my eyes. Then the grief. A tidal wave slamming into my ribs. “Liam.” The name tears out of me, raw and shredded.

Max swallows hard, thumbs brushing my tears, because now I’m crying too, ugly and violent and unstoppable.

“I know,” he whispers, forehead against mine. “I know. We’re going to find him. I swear to you. We’re going to find him and bring him home to us.”

I clutch his shirt with trembling fingers, sobbing into his chest as days of numbness crack open into a storm. Hugo crawls fully onto the bed and presses his head against my stomach, whining softly.

Max holds me. Tight. Steady. Fierce. Like he can hold all the broken pieces of me until I can breathe again. For the first time since Liam left, I feel something. I feel everything. It hurts like hell. But it means I’m alive.

My breathing finally evens out in Max’s arms. Slow. Heavy. Painful. But real. He brushes a few strands of hair off my damp cheeks and leans back just enough to see my face. His eyes are still red, jaw tight, but there’s purpose in him again. Focus.

“Sparrow,” he murmurs, “We have some leads.”

He helps me sit up carefully, his hands steady on my waist. Hugo stays pressed to my legs, as if making sure I don’t disappear again.

Leads. They found something. The word freezes the air between us.