NICK

I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.

My stomach was doing something strange, a slow, twisting motion that felt like illness.

This is just an inconvenience, I lied to myself. That is all this is. He is a problem that needs to be solved. I am a solver of problems. Once I find him, this feeling will stop. This is nothing.

I exhaled sharply through my nose, trying to force the air back into my lungs. The hospital came into view, a giant block of glass and light against the dark sky.

I didn’t park the car properly. I just left it and moved. I didn’t use my measured, professional walk. I moved with the speed of a man who had stopped performing for the benefit of his colleagues.

I entered the building and headed straight for the elevators.

"Dr. Bennett?" someone called out. I recognized the voice, but I didn’t turn around. "Wasn’t your shift over hours ago? Is everything alright?"

I didn’t answer. I didn’t even look.

I was already scanning the lobby. I was searching every corner, every chair, every shadow. I moved through the corridors with a singular focus that made people step out of my way.

I reached the ward and walked right up to the guards. They looked surprised to see me back so soon.

"Did someone come by here?" I asked. My voice was rough. "Pink hair. Earlier today."

The guards exchanged a look. One of them nodded slowly. "Do you mean Mr. Devereaux, sir?"

The name landed in my chest like a physical weight. I had been calling him Cyan in my head for forty-eight hours, but the guards knew him by a different name.

"Yes," I said. "That’s him. Was he here?"

"He came this afternoon," the guard said. "He didn’t stay long. Maybe five minutes. He left very quickly after that."

My stomach dropped. The confirmation was worse than the uncertainty. He had been here.

He had been in this building while I was here. I had walked past him, and he hadn’t said a word. He had let me walk right by.

I turned and started moving again. I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t explain myself.

Maybe he’s still sitting around like last time, I told myself. That’s right, he could be waiting for Cassian to wake up again.

I searched the wings of the hospital.

I went to the waiting rooms. I checked the cafeteria and the garden area by the east wing. I looked behind every pillar and on every bench.

The people around me looked confused.

Some looked concerned. They wanted to ask me what was wrong, but I didn’t have the words to tell them.

I couldn’t explain that I was looking for a man who had stayed in my apartment for two days with my permission.

I couldn’t tell them that I couldn’t stop thinking about the way his hair felt or the way he looked in the early morning light.

I found nothing. Every space I checked was empty of him.

I went back to the apartment. I don’t know why I did it. I knew he wasn’t there, but I had nowhere else to go.

I entered the code and opened the door. The dark was the same dark.

The couch was the same empty couch. The folded blanket was still sitting at the end of it, a mocking reminder of the order he had left behind.

I stood in the doorway for the second time that night. I looked at the nothingness of my own home.

Then I remembered the phone. I had left my old one for him. I had put my number in it and given him the passcode.

I pulled my current phone out of my pocket and dialed the number. I didn’t think about it; I just did it.

A ringing sound started. It was close. It wasn’t in another part of the city. It was in the room with me.

I followed the sound to the couch. I lifted the cushion, and there it was. The phone was lighting up in the dark, ringing for a call that no one was going to answer.

He hadn’t even taken the phone. He had left the only link I had to him tucked away like a piece of trash.

The ringing stopped. The apartment went quiet again.

I sat down on the couch. I felt the phone in my hand, still warm from the electronics.

The blanket was folded beside me. The grocery bags were still on the floor where I had dropped them. The bars of chocolate were still inside, bought for a person who didn’t want them.

A laugh bubbled up in my throat. It was bitter and brief. It was the sound of a man realizing he had been played by his own mind.

"You got me," I said quietly. I said it to the empty room. I said it to the folded blanket. I said it to the silence that was now louder than it had ever been.

The adrenaline was gone now, and the invoice was finally being paid. My headache returned with a vengeance. The pressure behind my eyes was a heavy, thudding weight.

My muscles ached. My throat felt raw and tight, the warning having turned into a full-blown illness. I noted these things. I did what I always do; I put them in a box and told myself I would deal with them later. But tonight, the box wouldn’t stay shut.

The physical pain was less interesting than the thing happening in my chest. I sat there and looked at it for the first time without turning away.

The apartment was exactly as it had been before Cyan arrived. It was clean. It was quiet. It was mine.

But the dimensions felt wrong. The walls seemed too far apart, and the silence had a quality to it that I didn’t like.

It was the wrong kind of quiet again. It was the kind of quiet that meant something was missing.

I remained seated in the dark.

My body was broken, and my chest felt like it had been hollowed out. I looked at the blanket he had folded with such care.

He had left it at the exact end of the couch, perfectly aligned, as if he wanted to prove he could leave without leaving a trace.

But he had left a trace. It was everywhere. And I was the only one who could see it.