Page 37 of All Ghosts Aren’t Dead (The Forgotten #1)

BLUE

The floor creaked beneath us, but neither of us moved.

Jonah sat with his back to the wall, legs stretched in front of him, one knee slightly bent. I was cross-legged beside him with a book in my lap—one of the ones with wide spacing and soft paper.

The kind I didn’t have to be afraid of.

I read it slowly, sounding out each word under my breath so it wouldn’t echo too loud in his room. His shoulder brushed mine. Every once in a while, he glanced at the page and nodded—just enough to say I’m here, keep going.

When I turned another page, I felt his hand fall gently against my head. His thumb brushed the edge of my temple, then moved to the back of my neck.

“I’m so proud of you, Bug,” he said quietly.

I froze, just for a second, then I leaned into him and he pulled me in for real. He tugged me against his chest and wrapped those long arms around me. It was the first time he’d held me like that since we got back from the mission.

Since I stopped being a kid who needed saving and became something messier.

“I missed your hugs,” I whispered into his shirt.

“Me too, Bug.” He let out a soft laugh, rough around the edges. “You’ve got a lot of names these days, you know that? Bailey. Blue. Bug.”

“I didn’t want to be Bailey anymore,” I whispered. “Not at first. Bailey was scared all the time. But Blue… Blue was the part of me that still believed in soft things. In you.”

“Me?”

“That’s what you said—‘blue is the color your body makes when it decides to live.’”

He went quiet. I felt his arms tighten a little, like the memory had snuck up and grabbed him.

“All the best things are blue,” he whispered, and then he buried his face in my hair.

Not fast.

Not rough.

Just this quiet, aching kind of pull, like he was trying to hold all the pieces of me a little closer.

“I thought I lost you,” he said, voice thick. “Every day, I thought—I thought I left you in that house.”

“You didn’t,” I told him. “You gave me what I needed to survive.”

His breath shuddered against my scalp. “I don’t know if I deserved to be the thing you believed in.”

“You’re worth believing in, JJ.”

He didn’t say anything after that, but he didn’t have to.

For the first time since everything broke, I let myself believe we were both still here.

Still breathing…

Still blue .

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