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But the cry was too faint, the noise in her head too persistent. And she was so tired—tired of treading water, trying to stay afloat. All she wanted was to disappear. To hide. To sleep. To escape the perpetual cycle of pain.

Restless, she got to her feet.

The afternoon breeze had welled, driving the swift-moving current against the base of the island, slamming the waves into the rocky outcrop guarding the entrance to the cave.

A scattering of pebbles slipped beneath the shift in her weight, and her heart raced as she watched them plunge into the dizzying drop to the sea.

Her hand went to her pocket, fingers shaking. She needed to turn on her phone. She needed to call Kam.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

She knew why she was up here. She knew why, after so many years, she’d finally ascended that staircase.

How many times had she felt the pull, yearning to give in?

First, the temptation back in Hamburg, on the cold mornings waking in Henrik’s bed. And then, more loudly, more frighteningly, in the days, the months, the year that followed her dad’s death. And again, after Kelsey. After Yokohama. After… after…

Her heart pounded, crescendoing the rush of blood in her head.

It was a losing battle. One she could never win.

She pulled out her phone. Thumbed the power button. She could turn it on. Call Seren.

No.

A wash of uncanny stillness overcame her as she flung the last of her lifelines over the edge. She watched the phone spiral, violently dashing against the rocks, before being taken by the sea.

It was too late. There was no place to run. She’d stumbled down the wrong path one too many times.

It was no one else’s burden to bail her out this time.

Scene 53: Take 1

I couldn’t sleep.

On the fourth day, Seren called in the middle of the night. I was lying in bed, still fully dressed, staring at my ceiling.

I knew, before I answered my phone, why she was calling—what she would say.

I’d known since that first morning. I’d felt it in my soul.

It didn’t stop me from clinging to a fraying thread of hope as I answered my phone.

“They found her. She’s gone.” It’s all she said. All I could understand. And then the stoic, ever-poised, ever-proper sister of the woman I loved most in all the world was crying. Sobbing. Wailing on the other end of the line.

I must have said something. I don’t think I just hung up. I don’t know if I hung up at all.

I got up, walked across my bedroom, and collapsed in the hall.

I lay there on the cool marble tile, with my cheek pressed to the floor. I didn’t cry. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. If my heart still beat, I no longer knew it. I simply felt nothing.

And then, as the seconds ticked away, as reality set in—it hit me: a sudden, crushing, turbulent cataclysm of emotion. A violent surge of hysteria ripping through the numbness. Itswallowed me whole.

Somewhere, a high, wavering, desperate noise pierced the air, and it took a moment to realize the sound was coming from me. I pummeled the floor—screamed and screamed and screamed. I didn’t care who heard me. I didn’t care about anything.

My beautiful, extraordinary, perfectly imperfect Dillon Sinclair was gone, lost forever. Three days before her thirty-first birthday.

The truth struck me in searing, agonizing waves of pain—the dawning realization that I’d never see her again. Never kiss her chapped lips, never smell the sea in her hair, or hear the smile in her voice when she called me Kam-Kameryn. I had held her for the last time.