When I woke from a three-year coma, everyone treated me like spun glass. They were terrified of something else happening to me. Every minute of my day was carefully divvied up so that I was never, under any circumstances, left alone. My little sister, Lucy, took the morning shift, walking with me around the block to help rebuild my withered leg muscles. In the afternoons, my childhood best friend, Connor, took over, dragging me to arcade bars and coffee shops to pass the hours. In the evenings, my parents brought me back to their house, crowding the dining table with steaming, rich broths and heavy plates meant to patch me back together. And when the clock hit eight, my girlfriend, Summer, would arrive to take me home. Lying in bed at night, I would tuck her against my chest and laugh quietly into her hair. “You guys don’t have to hover like this. I’m a grown man. I won’t let anything happen to me again.” Summer would pull back, her dark eyes entirely devoid of amusement. “You have no idea how important you are to us, Eli. None of us could survive losing you a second time.” Hearing that made my chest swell with an almost suffocating warmth. I thought I was the luckiest man alive, sheltered beneath an impenetrable fortress of love. Until I picked up Connor’s phone and found a group chat I wasn’t in. The title read: “Operation: Protect Summer’s Love.” The most recent text was from Connor, sent fifteen minutes ago: “Eli and I are at the retro arcade. Coast is clear. You can take Asher back to the loft now.” I scrolled up with a numb thumb. There was Lucy, from this morning: “Taking Eli to the park near the complex. Summer, don’t bring Asher to the bagel shop down the street today.” Above that, my mother: “Eli just finished dinner. Drop Asher off at his place before you come pick him up.” I tapped the avatar next to the name “Asher”. The room seemed to drop ten degrees. The air turned to crushed glass in my lungs. Asher. The reckless driver who put me in a coma for three years was sleeping with my girlfriend. And the people I thought were guarding my life were merely taking shifts running interference for theirs. … The ambient noise of the arcade—the synthetic chirps of pinball machines, the heavy bass of shooting games, the laughter of teenagers—suddenly sounded as if it were muffled under ten feet of murky water. I stood frozen in my own skin until Connor walked over and nudged my shoulder. “What’s up, Eli?” The cabinet screen in front of us pulsed in neon green: “PRESS START TO CONTINUE.” The glare cut across my face, hiding just how completely the color had drained from it. I handed his phone back, my fingers steady through sheer, stubborn will. “Nothing. Just need to hit the restroom.” Connor’s hand shot out, catching my forearm. His grip was too tight. A hairline fracture of panic showed in his eyes. “You want me to come with?” The memory of all his past kindness turned sour, rotting on my tongue. I managed a dry, hollow curve of my lips. “I’m just taking a piss, Connor. You don’t trust me to do that alone?” A flicker of guilt twitched across his face. He forced a self-conscious laugh and let go. “Right. Sorry. Just… don’t be long.” “Yeah.” I walked past the restrooms, pushed through the fire exit, and hailed a cab on the street. The moment the car pulled away from the curb, Summer’s name flashed across my dashboard screen. I let it ring. I opened my call logs instead. Every thirty minutes, like clockwork. A missed call from Summer. I had once teased her about being a clingy warden, and she had wrapped her arms around my neck, trembling with theatrical terror. “Eli, I need to know you’re breathing. I have to hear your voice to know you’re safe.” Her therapist had told my family that Summer had developed severe trauma-induced anxiety. That if anything happened to me again, her mind would snap. So I had answered every single call. I had dutifully shared my live location, grateful for a devotion that seemed almost saintly. In reality, my GPS coordinates were just a digital green light for her and Asher. The phone stopped ringing, then lit up again immediately. I swiped to answer. “Hello?” “Eli? Where are you?” Summer’s voice was breathless, bordering on frantic. “Connor said you went to the bathroom and vanished. He looked everywhere—” I blinked against the stinging behind my eyelids. “It got loud in there. I stepped out for some air.” There was a ragged pause on the other end, followed by a wet, trembling breath. “God, Eli… please don’t scare me like that. Where are you? Stay put. I’ll have Connor pick you up.” I leaned against the taxi window, looking up at the drawn curtains of her sixth-floor loft. And right before the call disconnected, riding on the tail of her breathless sigh, came a tiny, muffled gasp—and a man’s low, stifled groan vibrating through the receiver like distant thunder. The line went dead. I stumbled out of the cab, bent double over the curb, and dry-heaved until my stomach muscles seized in agony. Acid burned my throat. When I finally managed to straighten up, the building’s glass lobby doors pushed open. Two figures stepped into the afternoon light. Asher. The boy who had plowed a truck into my driver’s side three years ago. Summer was clinging to his arm. She stood on her tiptoes, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to his mouth. “Eli will be home soon,” she murmured, her voice dripping with an intimacy that made my skin crawl. “I’ll come to your place tomorrow. I’m sorry you have to hide like this, Ash.” The young man slid his arm around her waist, his face a portrait of noble suffering. “It’s fine. It’s my fault. I fell for you back then, and I got so crazy jealous I lost my head and hit his car. You didn’t press charges. His parents gave me a letter of leniency because I was barely nineteen. This is my penance. I don’t deserve anything more.” Every word was a serrated blade slicing through my ribs. My eyes dilated. The strength in my legs evaporated. It hadn’t been an accident. I had rotted in a hospital bed for three years, tube-fed and wasting away, while the man who put me there had been wrapped in the warm, forgiving embrace of my family. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted hot, metallic blood. Summer was reaching up to stroke Asher’s cheek. “Let me drive you—” Footsteps pounded on the asphalt. Connor sprinted around the corner, panting wildly. “Summer! Eli’s gone! I can’t find him anywhere!” Summer’s face inverted. The tenderness vanished, replaced by an ugly, rabid terror. She shoved Asher back, lunged forward, and grabbed Connor by the collar of his jacket. “I gave you one job!” she hissed, her voice vibrating with a demonic fury. “You just had to watch him! How the hell did you lose him?!” She looked like a ghoul clawing through a grave. I lowered my eyes and slipped into the shadow of an alleyway before either of them turned toward the street. I hailed another cab, gave an address, and pulled up a contact in my phone I hadn’t spoken to in years. When the line connected, I didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Three years ago, you offered me a spot on your research team abroad. Does that offer still stand?” There was a beat of stunned silence, followed by a firm, clear confirmation. I closed my eyes. “Good. But I need you to help me stage my own death first.” The moment I hung up, my phone exploded with calls. Summer. Connor. Lucy. My mother. I ignored them all. Then came the texts, stacking up like falling dominoes. Connor: “Eli, where the hell are you?! Summer is losing her mind!” A text from Lucy arrived right behind it. An attached video. My thumb hesitated, then pressed play. On the tiny screen, Summer was limping down a sidewalk, her arm bruised and bloody from a fresh scrape, her clothes smeared with street grime. She looked utterly deranged, screaming my name into oncoming traffic. Lucy: “Eli, Summer got clipped by a bike trying to look for you! Mom and Dad almost passed out! Where are you?! Stop torturing us!” I took a slow, agonizing breath. My grip on the phone tightened until the glass groaned, then I let my fingers go limp. I tapped out a single location, hit send, and powered the device off. Then, I turned toward the long, stone stairway leading up the hillside. Two months ago, right after I woke up from the coma, Connor had shown me a video. It was taken on these very stairs. It showed Summer, in the pouring rain, dropping to her knees at every single step, bowing her forehead against the freezing stone, crawling toward the chapel sanctuary at the summit. She had never believed in God. She had never set foot in a church. Yet for three years, she had supposedly bled on those stones, praying for a miracle to bring me back. When she vanished for twenty-four hours after my discharge, she had returned with bruised knees, a swollen forehead, and fever-bright eyes. “I went back to settle my debt with heaven,” she had whispered, collapsing into my arms. “To thank them for giving my Eli back.” I had looked at her scraped skin, wept tears of profound gratitude, and whispered, “Summer, let’s get married.” Back then, I was drowning in an ocean of manufactured romance. I was too blind to notice how her body had gone rigid at the word “married”. It took me an hour to climb those hundred steps. The titanium rod in my right femur throbbed with a deep, sickening ache. I dragged myself to the sanctuary room where the perpetual votive lights burned. I pushed the heavy cedar door open. The moment my eyes adjusted to the warm, flickering amber light, my nails dug into the palms of my hands. There was a brass vigil lantern near the altar. It was supposed to be dedicated to the child Summer and I had lost—the miscarriage triggered by the shock of my crash three years ago. Engraved beneath the flickering flame was a single name: “Asher.” Written in Summer’s unmistakable, elegant script. The air in the room turned into a lungful of needles. I began to tremble. The man who had destroyed my body and killed my unborn child was being prayed over in the light that belonged to my dead baby. I raised a shaking hand, ready to smash the glass lantern against the stone floor, when frantic footsteps hammered down the hallway. “Eli!” My arm froze. I turned around, my vision swimming in crimson. Summer hurled herself across the threshold, throwing her body between me and the lantern. “Don’t touch that!” she cried out. My chest heaved. A ragged, animal sound tore from my throat. “Why?” I rasped, barely recognizing my own voice. “That light was supposed to be for our child!” A wave of gut-wrenching pity flickered across Summer’s face. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Footsteps echoed behind her. “Don’t blame Summer,” my mother’s voice rang out, steady and defensive. “It was your father’s idea. And mine.” The world seemed to tilt. I turned around, staring at my parents standing in the doorway. “Why?” I whispered, my voice breaking like dry kindling. They met my gaze for a second, then looked down, unable to hold it. Lucy pushed past them, her brow furrowed in deep, righteous indignation. “Eli, the baby is gone. Keeping a candle lit for a memory is just a waste of grief. While you were lying in that bed for three years, Asher was here, taking care of Mom and Dad like his own parents! What’s wrong with giving him a prayer lantern?” She crossed her arms, her tone dropping into hard reprimand. “He stepped up and did your duty for three years. Instead of being grateful, you want to smash his memorial? Aren’t you being completely heartless?” It felt as though an iron sledgehammer had slammed into my chest. I stared at this girl—the sister I had sheltered, the little girl whose college tuition I had paid out of my own savings. She was a stranger. “I was in that bed,” I spat through clenched teeth, “because he ran me down!” A shadow crossed the doorway. Connor stepped inside, his hand resting gently on Asher’s shoulder. “Eli, the crash wasn’t on purpose,” Connor said, stepping forward with an easy, reasonable sigh. “Asher has spent every day since trying to make amends. Don’t be so bitter. Let it go.” The defensive posture Connor took—the way he angled himself in front of Asher—was identical to the way he used to defend me from bullies when we were twelve. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and looked straight at Summer. “Tell them,” I said quietly. “Tell them if it was an accident.” Summer’s gaze darted away, her eyelashes fluttering in panic. She hadn’t told them. They honestly believed Asher was just a tragic, remorseful boy. A terrible, broken laugh caught in my chest. Before I could speak, Summer lunged forward, seized my wrist, and dragged me out into the corridor. She pulled with frantic, desperate strength. My bad leg buckled, but I caught her arm, forcing her to an abrupt halt beneath the archway outside. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her fists were clenched so hard her knuckles were white. “You know, don’t you?” she whispered. I looked at her in silence. Her fingers clamped down on my wrist, tightening until the bone felt like it would splinter. “You can’t tell them, Eli. If you say a word, Asher is ruined. Your parents, Lucy, Connor—they’ll tear him apart.” “And what about me?” My voice was barely a breath. The hallway blurred around her face. “He stole three years of my life. He killed our baby. Does he just walk away clean?” I yelled the last words, a raw, shredded sound that echoed off the stone vaulting. Summer broke. She threw her arms around my waist, burying her face into my chest. “I’m sorry, Eli. I’m so, so sorry.” Hot tears soaked through my shirt, burning against my skin. Then she whispered, “He hasn’t walked away clean, Eli. He hasn’t slept a full night in two years. His conscience is tearing him alive. Isn’t that punishment enough?” My hands dropped to my sides. A cold, bottomless void opened behind my ribs. “Punishment enough?” I lost my mobility, my career, my twenties, and my child. And his punishment was insomnia? I wanted to laugh, but the expression on my face felt closer to a grimace of death. Summer slowly lifted her tear-streaked face from my chest. “Please, Eli. Just let it go. Pretend… pretend you never found out.” All the marrow seemed to drain from my bones. I exhaled a long, dead breath into the cold air. “Let’s break up, Summer.” Her face went pale as sheet paper. Her breathing turned rapid, shallow. “No. No, Eli, I won’t let you leave me.” My eyes were suddenly, terrifyingly calm. “If we don’t break up, what happens to Asher?” Her body swayed. It took her an eternity to close her eyes and choke out the words: “I’ll send him away.” “Summer.” A cracked voice called from the end of the courtyard. Asher stood there, his fists clenched at his sides, his eyes swimming with cinematic agony. Summer’s fingers clamped into my forearm again. Her torso instinctively leaned half an inch in his direction. Then she looked at me. She forced her gaze away from Asher, her jaw tightening into a bloodless line. She said nothing. Connor caught up, his face darkening with annoyance as he glared at me. “Eli, are you seriously making her choose? You just want to see him broken so you can feel important?” Lucy chimed in, her voice shrill with indignation. “Asher’s only wish was to stay by Summer’s side and be quiet! He never tried to take your place! Why are you so petty?” My parents moved up beside Asher, flanking him like protective sentinels. “As long as we’re breathing,” my father said heavily, “nobody is sending this boy anywhere.” One after another, their voices fell like stones, crushing what was left of my heart into paste. I looked at the tableau in front of me. My parents, my sister, my best friend. They were all standing in a wall of solidarity around the man who had crippled me. And Summer was still standing by my side—isolated, looking thoroughly out of place. I managed a faint, grotesque smile. “Aren’t you going to join them?” Her breath hitched. She kept her eyes glued to the stone pavers, refusing to look at Asher. Slowly, painfully, she shook her head. Asher’s eyes went wide. “Summer… you’re really throwing me away?” Summer’s nails bit deeper into my flesh. “You always wanted to study in Europe,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I’ll fund it.” Asher’s face drained of life. My mother gasped, stepping forward to protest, but Summer turned her back on them all. “I’ve made up my mind.” Lucy glared at me with pure venom. “This is all your fault!” Asher lowered his head. When he looked up again, his expression was hollowed out by a terrifying finality. “If I can’t be near you, Summer, I’m already dead,” he said softly. “I’d rather end it myself than let you banish me.” With that, he spun on his heel and sprinted down the mountain path toward the precipice. My parents, Lucy, and Connor hesitated for half a second before chasing after him with terrified screams. Beside me, Summer went completely rigid. “Summer,” I murmured. She moved. The violent momentum of her turning caught me off balance. I tumbled sideways, my knees and elbows scraping hard against the sharp gravel of the courtyard. A jolt of blinding pain shot through my repaired femur. Summer stopped ten feet away, turning back to look at me, her eyes wide with frantic conflict. I pushed myself up onto one knee, bleeding, and looked at her with utter, quiet indifference. “Go on.” The hesitation left her face. “Wait for me, Eli! As soon as he’s safe, I’m coming right back for you!” She turned and ran. In less than a minute, the mountaintop belonged only to me. I sat there for a long time, watching the sun bleed out behind the ridge until the sky turned the color of a fresh bruise. My pocket vibrated. I answered. “Is the transport arranged?” “Everything is set on this end,” Kat’s voice came through, brisk and steady. “How do you want the police to record it?” I looked down at my ruined leg, then out over the winding mountain road below. “A car crash,” I said. …… It was pitch black by the time they managed to talk Asher off the ledge. Summer stood in the hospital hallway, rubbing her pounding temples. A sharp pang gripped her chest as she remembered the man still waiting on the mountain. She pulled her phone from her coat pocket. Before she could dial, an unknown local number flashed on the screen. “Hello? Is this Summer Langdon?” “Yes. Who is this?” “I’m calling from the State Highway Patrol. Eli Dawson was involved in a severe vehicular collision on North Mountain Road about forty minutes ago. We need you to come to the site for identification.”
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