Page 105 of Double Standards

But I’m not ready. Not yet.

There’s too much I haven’t said. Too much I haven’t done. Faces float through my mind—Cassie’s most of all—her voice calling out, her hands holding me together. If I go now, I’ll never get to tell her everything she deserves to hear. I’ll never get to make this right. I’ll never get to see what could’ve been. That thought alone makes the pain worth enduring.

So I fight. I claw at the edges of consciousness, refusing to surrender. Because as long as I can still feel, there’s a chance I’mstill alive. And I’m not giving that up. Not without one hell of a fight.

My deepest insecurities rise to the surface. Only Cassie can make me feel this way, so vulnerable. She deserves so much more, though, so much better than I can give her. She isn’t safe, not here, not with me. Yet I can’t find it in myself to leave her. As much as I know this is my fault. Whoever aimed this bullet at me did it with intent, and it could have been Cassie bleeding out instead of me.

I wouldn’t change a thing if it meant she was safe.She’s crying. I can feel her tears hit my cheeks, falling hot against the growing cold. Her voice is cracked and raw, breaking on my name as she begs me not to go.“Stay with me, please. Stay with me.”

“Get…inside…” I manage to pull the two words from my chest,

The chill of death creeps in slowly, like frost crawling across my skin. It numbs everything; my fingers, my limbs, my thoughts. Until even the pain begins to fade. It's not relief. It's erasure. Like I’m being slowly unwritten from the world.

Cassie’s hands, warm and trembling, cup my face, her touch the only thing still tethering me to the living. Her skin is soft, familiar, achingly real. But even that warmth can’t hold back the cold that’s swallowing me whole. It seeps through me, cruel and unstoppable, dragging me deeper into the dark.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I hear her. Ifeelher. And it wrecks me.

God, she shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t have to watch this. I don’t deserve her grief, her desperation. I don’t deserve her love. But she’s giving it anyway, pouring everything she is into me like it might bring me back.

And for a moment, I want to believe it could.

“I haven’t got you anything,” she whispers through her sobs.

“You did,” I breathe out, “you stayed.”

“I’m not leaving you. Not now. Not ever.”

Beneath the sorrow, something quieter starts to settle in me. Not fear. Not pain. Peace. A soft, aching stillness that tells me it’s okay to stop fighting. That whatever storm has been raging inside me… it’s done now.

I think about what we had—whatthiswas between us. It was messy. Complicated. But it wasreal. It mattered. She mattered more than I ever let myself say. More than I ever let myself believe I could have.

And now, I have to let it go.

My vision blurs, her face the last thing I see. Her eyes, wide and full of everything I never deserved. My heart stutters, once. Twice.

Then I close my eyes.

And give in to the dark.

“Blood loss… stable… monitoring…”

I hear the words.

They sound foreign. Speaking is pointless. Moving is worse. Every part of me aches.

Voices flit in and out. I try to focus, but the effort drains me. Eventually, I stop trying altogether.

I let go.

“Merry Christmas, Axel.”

My name pulls me from the void.

The voice is softer, thinner than before. Sad.

A warm hand strokes my cheek, delicate and trembling.