Page 60 of Fallen Empire

Something about it clung too tightly. The scent, the cadence of his voice, the way his words seemed to bleed into reality even now.

If I told Jaxson, he’d chalk it up to trauma. Hallucinations. PTSD.

But what if it wasn’t?

I swallowed and forced a quiet breath through my nose. “Yeah… maybe.”

That was all I gave him. All I could.

He didn’t push. Just sat there, thumb gently moving against my hand like he was willing to ride out the storm until I could breathe again.

After a long moment, I finally whispered, “Good… morning?” The question sat on the air between us, weak but honest. I wasn’t sure what day it was, or how long I’d been out.

Jaxson let out the softest breath of a laugh, more air than sound.

“Morning,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, like he hadn’t used it in hours. “You’ve been out for a while. Nearly gave us all a damn heart attack.”

His thumb moved lightly across the side of my hand, and I hated how much I needed that touch. How it tethered me to this world instead of the one I’d just escaped in my head.

I swallowed hard. “How long?”

“Four days. Today will be day five.”

Five days.

It hit me like a weight pressing into my chest. I blinked up at the ceiling, trying to process what that even meant—what I’d missed, what had changed.

All I could feel was unbearable pain radiating from every part of my body. Fire. A million needles in my leg. And my chest, God, it felt like someone had just pulled a knife out of it.

“Where am I?” Despite wanting to speak normally, my words were barely audible, so quiet that Jaxson had to lean in just to decipher them.

“NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.”

My brows furrowed, trying to recall why that didn’t feel right.

Bruce had kidnapped me.

I closed my eyes.

A van. Bruce. And the disgusting stench that had filled the air, so strong it seemed to follow me even here.

And then… nothing.

“Do you remember what happened?” Jaxson asked, his voice laced with unease. Like he wasn’t sure he wanted me to.

“Bits and pieces,” I admitted, because it was the truth.

The reality of what happened existed in jumbled chaos, like a cloud I couldn’t quite clear. I couldseeit, but only inflashes. Small, broken clips of me standing in front of a gun. Not once, but twice. I remembered being hit by—what was it? A car? And crawling out. Bruce falling to his death.

But the rest… it was like my mind had erased the trauma I’d endured. Or maybe buried it somewhere too deep to reach—at least not yet.

Dissociative amnesiais the medical term.

And that’s the thing about trauma.

Sometimes the brain suppresses it to protect us—shoving it into the darkest corners so we don’t have to feel it. So we can survive.

But is that better?