Page 24 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

Her eyes slide shut again, as if sleep is pulling her under.

“Bianca!” My voice cracks apart, panic tearing through it. I whip around, vision blurring, heart slamming in my throat. “Somebody help us! Please, someone!”

Shadows shift around me, voices muffled at first, then suddenly closer, urgent footsteps rushing in.

A woman shouts, cutting through my panic: “Oh my God, someone call the paramedics!”

Another voice echoes, already on the phone, words spilling too fast—an ambulance, an address, everything sounding impossibly far away.

Footsteps close in, bodies pressing closer.

A store clerk drops to her knees, hovering at Bianca’s side, eyes wide, hands trembling as she reaches out but hesitates.

“Is she breathing?” another voice demands, sharp and tight with fear.

“Yes!” I shout, but it tears out of me half a sob, my throat raw with terror. “I—I don’t know what’s happening, she just collapsed… I don’t know—”

My voice shatters, choking off, tears spilling down my cheeks, blinding me as I clutch Bianca’s hand, my fingers trembling violently.

“I’m right here,” I whisper fiercely, squeezing her hand tighter, as if I could force my strength, my life, into her.

Around us, people move frantically—phones pressed to ears, voices raised, panic swirling.

I can’t breathe.

I’m trapped here, gripping Bianca’s hand, waiting, begging for her eyes to open again, for her lips to move, for the wail of sirens to cut through this suffocating silence.

I’ve been standing on Nate’s front porch for twenty minutes.

The wood creaks under my shoes when I shift my weight, but I still can’t lift my hand to knock.

I just stare at the door.

I swipe at my face again, but the tears keep coming. My cheeks sting from it, my head throbs, and my chest feels caved in, crushed under the weight of everything I can’t fix.

Every time I close my eyes, I see her.

Her face, pale and still. Her fingers limp in mine. Her eyes not really seeing me. The way her body just gave out, as if something inside her snapped and there was no time to catch it. No way to stop it.

I watched her chest go still. Watched the color drain from her face. Felt the silence settle when no one pressed down on her chest anymore. When the paramedics looked at each other and didn’t need to say a word.

I had never screamed like that before.

I didn’t even know I could.

I was the one who called her mom.

That call will haunt me forever. I could barely breathe, couldn’t force the words out. I just kept saying her name. And on the other end, her mom broke.

And now I’m here, my fingers twitching at my sides, desperate to do something, but all I can do is stare at the fucking door.

The house is quiet.

Too fucking quiet for what’s about to hit it.

My stomach churns because there’s no right way to say it. No version that won’t split the ground open.

Bianca is gone. And it’s on me to hand that truth to them, wrapped in broken pieces and silence. To take the memory of her laughter, her fire, all that fucking light she carried, and crush it with three words.

Bianca is gone.

The words claw at me, tearing me apart before I can even force them out.

My hand hovers near the door, but I don’t knock. Because the second I do, this stops being the worst day of my life and becomes the worst day of theirs.

They don’t know yet.

Inside that house, Bianca still exists. In their world, she’s still alive. And I’m about to end that.

I close my eyes for half a second, but all I see is her face. I swallow hard, my throat burning. She was everything to them, to me, to us.

She held all our jagged edges together and never once asked for anything in return. And now I have to tell the boys who loved her that she’s never coming back. There’s no right way to break someone’s heart.

I drag in a breath that barely makes it past my ribs and lift my hand to knock.

The sound echoes too loud, cracking through the stillness like a warning shot.

The second my knuckles leave the wood, I want to take it back. Swallow it down. Pretend I was never here.

But the door swings open anyway. And there they are, Nate and Theo.

Side by side. Smiling.

Their joy slams into me like a punch.

Nate’s smile falters first, his brows pulling tight.

Theo’s halfway through some smartass comment, but it dies the second he sees me.

I don’t even realize the tears are still falling until I catch the way their expressions shift.

I swipe at my face, but it’s too late.

“Quinn?” Nate’s voice drops, heavy with worry. “What happened?”

He steps forward without waiting, his hands half-reaching out, like he can’t decide if I’m hurt or about to collapse.

My heart pounds against my ribs as I fight for words. My hands won’t stop shaking, and I wipe at my eyes, desperate to control the tears that keep spilling over.

“I…” The sound cracks before I can form the words. I swallow hard, but the knot in my throat doesn’t budge. I don’t even know how to fucking say this.

Nate’s eyes stay locked on mine.

Theo’s flick back and forth between us, restless, searching.

“We were at the mall,” I start, my breath hitching. “Bianca made me try on these stupid jeans, and we were laughing, and then…”

My eyes drop to the ground, because saying it out loud makes it real.

“She just… she just dropped. Mid-sentence. Her phone hit the floor and then she did too. It was as if someone flipped a switch and shut her off.”

My fingers press to my forehead. “I thought she was messing around. For a second, I thought it was a joke. But her eyes—oh God, her fucking eyes—they didn’t look like her. And I kept calling her name, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t move. She was right there, and she didn’t fucking move.”

Theo’s brows pull tight, his jaw clenched.

“Wait, what are you saying?” His voice jumps. “She fainted? Passed out—”

“No.” I cut him off, shaking my head. “No, it wasn’t that.” I force myself to look up. “She never opened her eyes again.”

The air goes still.

Nate stumbles a step back, as if the ground tilted beneath him.

Theo blinks hard. “No.” His voice is thin, breaking.

I press my fists into my sides to stop the shaking. “The paramedics tried. They said there was nothing they could do. It was already…”

The word won’t come.

It doesn’t need to.

Theo’s hand slams against the doorframe, gripping it like he needs it to stay upright. “No. No, you’re wrong. She’s fucking fine.”

“She’s gone, Theo.” My voice splinters, breaking the quiet. “She’s really gone.”

The look on their faces, God. It isn’t just shock. It’s devastation.

“I’m sorry.” My throat tightens, strangling the words. “I don’t even know how to explain it. I couldn’t… I couldn’t do anything.”

Theo stumbles back a step as if I slapped him, as if he can still wake up from this.

Nate doesn’t move. His chest rises once, sharp, then again, slower. And suddenly, he’s there.

His arms wrap around me on instinct, tight and desperate, as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear too.

I collapse into him because there’s nowhere else to go. My fists clutch at the back of his shirt, sobs tearing out of me, ugly and loud.

He’s shaking. I feel it in the way his arms clamp around me, in the way his fingers knot into the fabric of my jacket like it’s the only thing holding him up. His breath shudders against my hair, fast and uneven.

“She… she’s not okay,” I whisper, the words scraping my throat. “Bianca… she didn’t make it. She died, Nate. Before the paramedics even got there. She was already—”

The breath rushes out of him. He doesn’t speak. He just buries his face in my shoulder and clings, and I cling back, both of us crushed beneath the weight of her loss.

Beside us, Theo sinks to the floor without a sound, his hands tangled in his hair, his eyes vacant, as if the world has slipped out from under him.

He doesn’t say a word.

Just pulls his phone from his pocket with shaking hands. His fingers fumble against the screen, clumsy, foreign. He taps her name.

The call screen lights up.

Ringing.

One ring.

Two.

My heart stutters, because I know exactly what he’s doing. I know what he’s hoping. If he can just hear her voice, even for a second, maybe it won’t be real. Maybe this is all some kind of mistake, some nightmare we’ll wake from.

Three rings.

He presses the phone harder to his ear, his jaw clenched so tight it looks ready to crack. Nate reaches for him but stops. We all stop.

Four rings.

I hold my breath. I don’t know why I expect silence, but I do.

“Come on, Bianca,” Theo whispers, his voice breaking apart. “Pick up. Pick up the fucking phone.”

Her voicemail cuts in. That familiar tone, then her voice—casual, sweet. “Hey, it’s Bianca. You know what to do.”

The call ends. Theo stares at the screen until the first tear slips down his cheek. Then another. And another.

He blinks hard, as if he can stop them, but his body begins to shake.

The phone slips from his hand and clatters to the floor.

His shoulders fold inward, and for a moment he looks like a kid who’s just learned the world isn’t fair.

That good people die. That love can end in a fucking shopping mall dressing room.

“No.” It rips out of him—a word, a scream, a prayer. “No. Fuck, no—”

His fingers dig into his jeans, gripping hard as his body shakes.

His spine curls inward, shoulders collapsing.

His face crumples in a way I’ll never forget, as if every piece of him is shattering under the weight of her being gone.

The sobs tear through him, full-body, violent, ugly.

He drags his hands over his face, but it’s useless.

The sound of him drowns out everything else.

Nate moves first.

He hauls Theo into his arms like his life depends on it.

Theo’s falling apart in front of me.

Nate’s holding him like his arms alone could stop him from unraveling. But I see it in Nate’s face. He’s breaking too. His chest rises too fast, his jaw locked tight, holding in a scream that wants out. His eyes flick around, landing on nothing, and still he’s trying to be the strong one for Theo.

I press a hand to my chest. My legs won’t move. My throat won’t open. I feel like I’m underwater. No light. No air. Just grief swallowing us whole.

I want to reach for them, to hold them both, to crawl into their pain and carry it on my back if it would stop them from breaking. But I can’t move. I’m frozen, watching something unfixable unravel right in front of me.

Then Nate looks up.

And fuck, that look.

His eyes are bloodshot, wet, wide with too much emotion and nowhere to put it.

The second we lock eyes, I see the moment it shatters him.

His mouth parts, just slightly, like he wants to speak, but nothing comes.

He doesn’t need to. I see it in his face—the same pain, the same loss, the same fucking helplessness.

Nate reaches out, his hand closing around my wrist, tugging me forward as if he can’t take another breath without pulling me into it too, into the grief that belongs to all of us.

And I go, because I can’t hold myself up anymore either.

He pulls me down, my forehead pressing into his shoulder as the tears come.

Theo shifts, one hand still clinging to Nate, the other fisting the back of my jacket.

The three of us fold into each other, wrapped tight in a silence that only exists when something permanent has been ripped away.

We don’t speak.

We don’t move.

Just the three of us, holding on in a silence so heavy it feels like the world itself is holding its breath.

And I know, with every part of me, that nothing will ever be the same again.