Page 1 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

Theo

F

ive

months

ago,

it

felt as if the weight had shifted off my chest, just a little.

Scarlet was on stage, alive in a way that made you forget we were still bleeding. That grin of hers—fuck, it glowed, as though she was made for that stage. For a minute, the past didn’t pull so hard.

And ten days later, Xander and Poppy announced they were having a baby.

A fucking baby.

I wanted to be happy. I did.

Nate and I both smiled, clapped, gave them that nod… fuck yeah, man, congrats, you did it.

A whole future stretched out in front of them. The kind we once believed we’d have too, back when we were still stupid enough to believe in forever.

We smiled. We laughed. Said we were happy.

But underneath it all, we were collapsing in on ourselves.

Nate and I have been carrying the same fucking weight for seven years. The kind that latches onto your ribs and festers, until you forget what it ever felt like to breathe without it.

We’re not living.

Not really. We’ve just been surviving without her. And some days, even that feels like a fucking lie.

Maybe it’s just today.

Or maybe it’s this time of year—how it cuts into me like it has a score to settle. Every time, it finds the softest part and tears me wide open all over again.

Seven brutal fucking years bleeding without her.

Bianca… the girl who transformed me.

She pushed me to stop hiding from the world. She fit into our hearts as if she’d been made for us. The universe got one thing right, only to rip her away and watch us burn.

I can’t remember what it feels like to have anything but this hollow, aching void where she used to be.

Today, on the anniversary of when everything fell apart, it slams into me as if it’s happening all over again.

Seven long years without her laugh, her smile, or the way she could walk into a room and quiet every storm in my head.

She was my anchor. Now I’m adrift, fighting to stay afloat beneath the weight of everything she left behind.

But life doesn’t stop.

It doesn’t give a shit about the wreckage it leaves behind or the lives it shatters. It just keeps moving.

All I can remember is how her laughter made everything seem a little lighter. And I’d give anything for just one more fucking second to hold her again.

She’s gone.

Taken from us. Ripped out of this world and no matter how many years pass that truth never gets easier. It lingers, an unbearable loss pulsing beneath my skin.

When Nate kills the engine silence swallows us.

We don’t move. We can’t. It’s the same brutal routine over and over. We sit here, trapped in this unbearable limbo, both of us knowing the second we step out of the car and walk to her grave it’s over. There’s no stopping it. No holding back the flood of pain waiting to drag us under.

We don’t want to see her name carved into that cold, unyielding stone. Or face the reminder of everything we’ve lost.

The weight of that day, the silence that roars when memories come crashing in, the heartbreak so sharp it threatens to tear us in two. We’re not ready to confront it. Hell, I doubt we ever will be.

So we sit here, paralyzed, clinging to the delay of the inevitable. We hold on to these last fragile moments of numbness before the storm breaks loose and tears us apart all over again.

I turn my head and catch Nate staring through the windshield, his jaw tight, throat working as he swallows hard. His hands grip the steering wheel as if it’s the only thing holding him together.

When he finally turns to meet my gaze, no words are needed.

He gives a slight nod and that’s all it takes. It’s time—to stand before her and pretend we’re strong enough to face this.

In the days after her death, this place—her graveside—became a second home to us.

We spent hours in the grass, staring at her name carved into the cold stone, desperate for a sign.

Anything to prove she wasn’t really gone, that she was still here with us somehow.

We couldn’t bring ourselves to leave her; the thought of her lying alone in that cold, lifeless ground was unbearable.

Now, things are different.

We only come twice a year, because the pain is still too raw to face any more than that. Once on her birthday, to honor how she lived. And again on the day she was taken from us. Each visit feels like dragging ourselves back into the fire, just to be burned all over again.

And Nate… he changes.

Days like this rip him apart in ways nothing else can. He goes quiet, folding in on himself as if he could disappear; as if hiding long enough might let him escape a world without Bianca. He locks himself away in his room, curtains drawn, the air thick with all the words he’ll never say.

I let him be.

I don’t push for answers or ask questions.

Sometimes I lie beside him, our heads close on the bed, the only sound being the quiet rhythm of our breaths.

The silence heavy with everything we don’t say. It’s my way of telling him I’m here. That somehow, everything will be okay… even when it feels like it never fucking will be.

Most days he’s my rock, the strong one who catches me when I’m falling apart. But during those two days we spend with Bianca, the weight is too much, even for him.

On those days I become his anchor, steadying him, even while I’m on the verge of breaking myself.

No one understands this pain except us. Not Xander, Ace, or Kit. Not even Scarlet.

They see the cracks. The hollow stares, the way our voices fall to whispers. But they don’t know the ache that never fades. The wound that keeps bleeding no matter how much time passes. This grief is ours alone, a scar we carry in silence, the two of us, year after year.

I clutch the bouquet, a chaotic mix of vibrant, mismatched flowers, just the way she would’ve wanted, and shove the car door open, slamming it hard enough to rattle my chest.

Nate is already ahead of me, his steps quick, shoulders rigid, moving with purpose. It’s as if he’s desperate to reach her, to feel her presence, to find even the smallest trace of her left here that might ease today’s heaviness, if only for a moment.

Nate pauses ahead, his steps faltering as if the weight of her name is too heavy to bear. I feel it too. That suffocating ache, the air thinning until I’m left gasping for a breath that never comes.

That cold headstone will never capture who she truly was.

It can’t hold the warmth she radiated or the way her laughter lit even the darkest corners of our lives.

It can’t contain the depth of our love for her, every ounce of it carved into us.

No piece of stone could ever carry that.

And standing here now, it feels as though we’re losing her all over again.

We were just kids back then, naive enough to believe in forever. We thought we were untouchable, invincible.

But the day we lost her, that illusion shattered. Hope didn’t just fade… it fucking died. Now it lingers only as a ghost, something we can remember but never hold again. A dream slipped too far beyond our reach.

Nate stands frozen at the foot of her grave, body rigid, eyes locked on her name as if he could will her back to life.

I watch him, catching the way his jaw tightens, his fists clench and unclench, every movement screaming how close he is to shattering. For a second, I wonder if this will be the moment he finally breaks. If we both will.

Quietly, I step around him and crouch by the marble headstone. I set the bright, chaotic bouquet down beside the others already there.

I don’t need to read the card—I know they are from her mother.

The woman who loved Bianca with everything she had, who shattered the day she lowered her daughter into the ground.

Her grief-stricken sobs from the funeral are still etched into my mind, a sound so broken and raw that even now, all this time later, it still tightens my chest.

With the flowers laid, I step back to stand beside Nate.

He’s motionless, silent as stone, and the weight of him presses into the air between us. He doesn’t need to speak. I can feel every bit of what he’s carrying without a single word.

I grab his hand, my fingers curling tightly around his.

He sucks in a sharp breath and flinches as his grip turns crushing, holding on as though letting go would shatter him into a million pieces.

His touch is everything. It grounds me, a silent reminder that we’re not alone in this hell.

The vibrant happiness we once knew feels distant now. Buried deep beneath our feet.

Memories of her, our beautiful, wild girl with bright eyes and tangled hair, flood my mind, like a reel stuck on an endless repeat.

With her guitar slung low, Bianca’s fingers blurred as she tore through the strings, music pouring straight from her veins.

She didn’t just play; she commanded, owning it in a way that left the rest of us stumbling in the dark.

She lived for those moments. For the way the world bent to her will when she held that guitar.

I don’t doubt that if she were still here, she’d be bigger than both Nate and me combined.

Hell, bigger than anything we’ve ever fought to achieve. She was a true fucking star—and now she’s gone. And here we are, stranded in the ruins of everything that might have been, still wondering how we’re supposed to move on without her.

One thing I know for sure: if she were here, Nate and I would never have crossed paths with Xander and Ace.

We wouldn’t have put ourselves through hell searching for a way to numb the pain. Broken Oasis wouldn’t exist, at least not in this form. Maybe it would have happened anyway because Xander and Ace were too driven to let anything stand in their way. But for us, we wouldn’t have needed it.