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Alexa Play: Fire In The Water by Feist

I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving.

I couldn’t. I felt like I was underwater. I kept losing time as my mind tried to process what I’d read, and suddenly, I found myself walking alone down the dark street toward my shack, clutching the copy of the gazette I’d found to my chest like it could protect me from the truth.

This couldn’t be happening… It couldn’t be real. Riddick wasn’t… He couldn’t be dead?

It was a trick! He’d tricked everyone, faked his own death for some unknown reason…

I would ask him about it when I got home, and he would laugh and tell me it was just a coincidence. Or a misprint. Some sort of crazy misunderstanding that would feel obvious once he explained it all away …

With each step I took, I forced myself to focus on my breathing, the way Riddick taught me to do.

Inhale…

One, two, three…

Exhale…

One, two, three…

Rinse. Repeat.

It was over an hour’s walk from town to the shack, and my phone had started blowing up about ten minutes in. I turned it off and continued on my slow, dazed journey home.

By the time I made it to my front door, I’d gotten a handle on myself. I was no longer worried I would die from a panic attack, but my heart was beating so hard you would think I’d just run a marathon.

I stared at the door for a long time before I finally turned the knob and walked in.

Riddick was home, sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of food for me like he always did, and his head snapped to me as I walked in.

“Hey, baby boy,” he said, giving me his usual smile.

When I didn’t respond, the smile slipped off his face, and immediately, I knew… I knew he wasn’t going to explain it all away.

My entire world was about to implode… Again.

“You found out,” he whispered. It was a statement, not a question. He said it like he’d been waiting for this day, and it had only been a matter of time before everything came crashing down.

Swallowing back my tears, I tossed the newspaper on the table in front of him.

I held out a violently shaking finger and forced a single word out past the painful lump in my throat.

“Explain.”

He glanced at the paper, and I watched his heart break as he took in the photo that labeled him as Jake fucking Whittling. The man who’d died long before I even showed up in Stars Cove .

“What is there to explain, Finn? The truth is right here, staring up at you,” he said, gesturing to the newspaper.

“It’s not possible! What, did you fake your death? Is that why you won’t go into town?” My mind was racing. I knew that wasn’t the case because he had gone into town, and everyone had seen him that night on the beach. Wouldn’t that have been a bigger deal if everyone thought he was dead?

He couldn’t even look at me.

“I didn’t fake my death, Finn.”

“You must have! You can’t be… you can’t be… you’re right here!” I cried out, my voice finally cracking on my tears. I rushed forward and grabbed him, digging my fingers into his flesh to confirm that he was here and he was real.

“I’m dead, Finn. I’m sorry you found out like this. I wanted to tell you, I just… I didn’t know how. ”

“No…” I was shaking again. I backed away, feeling like I could literally die from the horror of what he was telling me.

He stood up and came after me, looking just as miserable as I felt.

“Baby, I’m sorry-”

“Don’t you fucking baby me!” I screamed at him. “I fucking loved you! You made me love you, and you’re not even fucking real? Am I crazy? Am I having a mental fucking breakdown?”

My whole body was cold, and I was shaking so hard that my teeth were chattering.

“Of course, I’m real, Finn. I don’t know how, but I am. You need to breathe, bab—Finn. You’re going into shock.”

He tried to pull me into him, but I jerked away.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” I screamed, unable to get a grip on myself.

I was replaying every interaction over the last few months in my head.

When Blake had first mentioned those guys in her car, she’d said Jake and Riddick separately, and I’d assumed they were two different dudes… but no, she was just calling him by his ni ckname…

At the beach party… could no one else see him? Was that why everyone had been looking at me so strangely? Was that why Quinn had been treating me like some kind of rabid animal after?

I must have looked insane yelling at nothing on the beach like that…

His flirty answers to where he lived before he moved in here with me…

‘Was living in purgatory ‘till I met you, baby boy.’

‘What do you mean? I’ve always been here, waiting for you.’

This was his shack. Jake’s shack. He’d always been here… fucking haunting it!

Then, the thing that sent me screaming over the edge of my own sanity was the memory of what he’d told me on the anniversary of my mom’s death.

‘You made me feel when I thought I would never feel again. You saw me when I thought no one would ever see me again, and I just… I’m so grateful for you, Finn.

You’ve given me something that’s worth looking forward to when, for a long time, all that stood before me were endless, empty days filled with nothing but bad memories and regrets. ’

An inhuman wail escaped me, and I collapsed into a boneless mass of grief on the floor.

Riddick didn’t try to speak. He dropped to his knees and crawled to me. Gathering me up in his big, firm , very real arms, he tugged me into his lap.

“I’m so sorry, Finn,” he whispered as he held me, rocking me back and forth as I sobbed wordlessly into his chest.

“I’m so, fucking sorry…”