Page 77 of When the Sky Falls

“You need to wake up, Mya.”

My blood turns to ice.

“What?”

“None of this is real,” he says, voice low and steady now. Like it’s a lullaby. A dare. A prayer.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No, this is real. You walked away. You left me. You didn’t call. You didn’t reach out. You just disappeared and now you’re⁠—”

“I never left,” he says.

His thumbs stroke my cheeks, like he’s memorizing the shape of me. “You did.”

And just like that, the hallway dissolves.

Flickers like a film reel unspooling mid-scene.

The walls stretch.

The light pulses.

I hear the distant echo of machines—steady beeping, somewhere far off. Too far to make sense. Too loud to ignore.

“Come back to me,” he begs. “Please. I can’t do this without you.”

I look up at him, heart in my throat, a scream lodged somewhere behind my ribs.

“Where am I?”

Fletch steps back, eyes shining. “Somewhere between goodbye and not yet. But you don’t belong here anymore.”

The hallway begins to fade. Like dust in a shaft of light.

And then?

So does he.

My knees buckle.

Not dramatically. Not like a slow-motion scene in a war film. No violin crescendo or gasping breath. Just… a quiet collapse. Like a building with its supports ripped out.

The kind of fall you don’t see coming until the floor meets your skin.

I blink, hard, trying to steady the world—gripping the cold cement wall like it might hold me here, root me to what’s real. But it’s no use. The backstage corridor, the chaos of cables and crates and distant laughter—it’s gone. Evaporated. Like steam from a cracked mug.

Everything smells different now. Not of sweat and stale beer and electricity.

No.

Now it smells like memory.

And I know that makes no damn sense. But somehow, in my bones—in the deepest, unspoken marrow of who I am—I know it’s true.

The lights shift. The air warps. Reality unspools like thread from a spool held too tightly.

Because I’m not in Madison Square Garden anymore.

I’m somewhere else.