Page 120 of The Long Way Home
RACHEL
Four years ago
Losing Josh
“Rhett.” The name shatters out of me, my throat clawing around the syllables. Silent sobs rip through my chest. My phone slips from my fingers, clattering to the floor, but it might as well have vanished into another world. Sound no longer exists. Only panic. Only the crushing weight inside my ribs that won’t let me inhale.
I’m gone. Completely untethered. I’m watching myself from somewhere above, hovering. My body is a stranger. It is rigid, trembling, and drowning in silence. I see Rhett, too, from where I’m at. His face, his arms, his chest. It’s all right there, but I can’t move. I can’t reach him.
“Sunny, what?” His voice tears through the fog, urgently scraping against me. His eyes dart across my face, wild and desperate, searching for something,anything, to hold on to. ButI can’t give him anything. There is nothing left. His hands find my arms, shaking gently at first. But my limbs are useless. Dead weight. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t make myself come back. I don’t want to come back.
“Sunny, what the fuck is wrong? You have to saysomething. Youhaveto say something. Please—say anything!” He doesn’t let go. His hands climb my arms until they frame my face. His fingers press into my cheeks, forcing my eyes up to his. And in those deep brown eyes, I see me—broken, lost, a storm of fear reflected back at me.
“Breathe, Sunny. You have to breathe. Please, you have to breathe. Look at me. Why aren’t you breathing?” His voice is desperate.
He pulls me against him. Chest to chest he swings his arms around me, holding me so tightly I can feel every beat of him as though it’s the rhythm of the world itself. The pressure pins the panic just enough, and finally—finally—I can inhale. One shaky, jagged breath. Then another. My sobs erupt, uncontrollable, tearing through me.
And he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t step back. He buries his face against my hair, murmuring over and over: “You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re safe. Hear me? You are safe.”
His voice is steady, but his heartbeat beneath my cheek is a storm, hammering through his ribs. He is holding me upright, keeping me tethered. Without him, I’d already be on the floor. I’m sure of it.
“We have to go.” My voice is a ghost, barely audible. “We have to go to the hospital.”
He jerks back just enough to see my face. “What? Why, Sunny, why do we have to go to the hospital?”
The words claw at my throat but won’t come out clean. “He’s hit. He’s dead. I think—oh my God, I think he’s going to be dead. Rhett, what if he’s dead?”
His face crumples. But then the expression is gone. He buries it so deep I almost doubt I saw it.
“Who, Sunny?” His voice cracks, but he forces it steady, begging me now. “Come on, please use your words. I need you to tell me what’s happening.”
“Josh.” The name rips out of me, and I’m pretty sure it is tearing my chest in two. “Josh and Margo. They were in a car accident. They—they told me Margo’s okay, but they—” My throat seizes. I can’t finish. I don’t want to finish. “They wouldn’t tell me about Josh. They… they wouldn’t, Rhett.”
I drag my eyes up to his.
I see it hit him. A flicker of devastation, so sharp it steals his breath this time. But then it’s gone again. He swallows it, all of it, and what’s left is only me, unraveling in his arms.
“What if he’s dead?” I whisper, the words tasting like blood in my mouth.
His arms tighten around me, unyielding, shielding me from the truth with nothing but his body. But I feel it. I know. He is scared, too.
The next five hours are the worst hours of my entire life.
I don’t know if I’m still on Earth. The rules feel different here. Like gravity shifted when no one was looking, and I slipped sideways into something darker, heavier. This place isn’t a hospital. Hospitals imply healing, exits, a version of the future that still exists. None of which are true here.
This—no this is hell. My hell. A private one, tailored down to the smallest detail, where time stretches and snaps, and I’m trapped inside the worst moment of my life on a continuous loop.
I’m not sure what is worse. Watching my mother disintegrate right in front of me, her body shrinking into itself, her face hollowing until I barely recognized the woman who raised me. Or hearing Margo beg God to take her too.
Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It cracked open on that plea, raw and desperate and stripped of pride. She didn’t scream. There wasn’t any rage. She just asked quietly, like she was already halfway gone. Like if God was listening at all, He’d know exactly how serious she was.
“Sunny, let’s go,” Rhett whispers. His voice is low. I think he is afraid the wrong volume might shatter what’s left of me. “We should get you home. You need rest.”
The only thing Ineedis my big brother.
“I’m not leaving without him.” The words tear out of my throat. “I’m not—”
I break apart before I can finish. The tears come again, hot and relentless, spilling faster than I can breathe through them. I thought there had to be a limit. A point where the body shuts down, runs dry, protects itself.
