Page 130 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

“Now you learn to fit together differently. You learn to live with the space he left behind,” Stitch murmurs, crouching beside me, voice thick as the sea beyond the porthole. “But you’re not empty. Not alone.”

The women close in. A shield of love. Bruised, broken, bleeding—and still, they hold me.

The boat rocks gently, a rhythm that should be soothing but instead feels like a clock counting down to an uncertain future. Somewhere below, Hank’s body lies in the ship’s morgue. Somewhere above, Gabe bleeds on the deck rather than accept comfort.

“He’ll come around,” Jenna says softly, reading my mind. “Men like that—they process differently. They need to hit bottom before they can climb back up.”

“What if he doesn’t come back up?”

“Then you drag him.” The certainty in Rebel’s voice surprises me. “You grab him by the collar and drag him back to the surface, because that’s what people who love each other do.”

Mia uncurls from her corner and moves to sit across from me. “Rigel told me about the fight they had. Before the mission.”

My stomach drops. “What fight?”

“Something about sharing you. About Gabe wanting more than Hank was willing to give.” She reaches across the small table and covers my hands with hers. “Whatever he’s carrying, it’s eating him alive.”

“He won’t talk to me.”

“He will. When he’s ready to stop punishing himself.” Stitch turns from the porthole, fixes me with eyes that have seen too much. “But you have to be ready to listen when he does.”

The coffee in my cup has gone cold, a bitter film coating the surface. Outside, waves lap against the hull. Time moves forward whether we’re ready or not.

“I should go find him.”

“Give him another hour,” Jenna advises. “Let him bleed a little more. Then go be the anchor he needs.”

The next hours pass in silence, too heavy for words.

We take our grief in shifts. Plates of food go untouched. Rebel pours coffee, no one drinks. Malia dozes upright, pain etched between her brows. Jenna presses her forehead to Carter’s shoulder, her eyes open but unfocused.

Rigel returns, wrapping Mia in his arms like he needs to feel her pulse just to believe she’s real. Jeb finally coaxes Stitch into sitting, her eyes hollow, her back still seeping blood into borrowed fabric. Walt paces. Blake leans against the bulkhead, arms crossed, a silent sentinel.

No one mentions the empty seat at the table.

When I slip away, no one tries to stop me.

I find him on the forward deck, alone beneath a sky smeared with stars and smoke. His back rests against a rusting storage container, knees bent, elbows braced. The shadows cling to him, hiding the blood still drying on his knuckles, the rawness in his silence.

He doesn’t move when I approach. Doesn’t look at me. Just keeps staring out at the ocean, the way you do when you need it to swallow everything you’re feeling.

I sink beside him, drawing my knees to my chest. The cold from the metal deck seeps through my borrowed clothes, through skin and bone, straight into the hollow he left inside me.

“I don’t know how to hold this much pain by myself.”

Still, Gabe says nothing.

“I know what you’re doing,” I say. “Bleeding it out, one inch at a time. Like if you punish yourself hard enough, it might somehow bring him back.”

His head bows low. Shoulders quake once. Twice.

“It won’t,” I murmur. “But I’ll sit here, with you, until you remember how to breathe.”

Silence stretches again, except it’s not empty now. It holds grief. Memories. The shape of a future neither of us knows how to face.

Finally, Gabe turns his face toward me. The ocean wind has dried salt on his cheeks that didn’t come from sea spray.

“I should’ve died instead of him.”