Just a few more steps, and she’s mine.
She’ll be free.
After
47
Nell
My eyes roll back—I can’t focus. Everything’s blurry, like I’m underwater.
But I’m aware enough to know I’m not tied to that bed anymore.
Not staring at Lea’s lifeless body.
Not trapped in that room of death. Now I’m in the back of a car, being driven somewhere.
Probably to the next hell.
Maybe to my end, not that I’d ever be that lucky.
And I’ve already made peace with it. Wherever they take me, I’ll find a way to end this. To stop the pain. I don’t need to keep suffering. Not like this
Lea’s gone.
And I wasn’t strong enough to save her.
Behind my eyes, she’s still there—haunting me. Her body twisted and still. Her eyes, wide and empty, staring through me like even in death she knew I failed her.
Like she’s still judging me.
And maybe she’s right.
“Nell?”
His voice cuts through the haze like a thread of light in the dark.
I wish Cameron were here.
God, I wish I could see him—just once more.
Stalker Boy, with his quiet eyes and that maddening calm.
I used to think he was cold and detached. But now I understand. He wasn’t heartless—he was focused. He saw the bigger picture while I was still clinging to the edges of my own fear.
He was right to keep his distance.
Right to put the mission first.
And I was too naïve, too wrapped up in my own pain to see it. Too stupid to realise he was trying to save me the only way he knew how.
“I’m sorry, Cameron,” I murmur, my voice thick and slurred, barely audible over the growl of the engine.
I drift in and out, caught between waking and sleep—between the nightmare I’ve lived and the one I’m afraid to wake into.
“Why are you sorry?”
His voice again. So clear. It sounds… real.
