My Last Wish novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Three in the Morning

I woke at three in the morning with my heart going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

The room was dark.

Teddy was breathing beside me with one fist against his cheek.

Nothing had happened.

That was the worst part.

There was no sound and no light and no reason, only the old voice at the back of my head saying the thing it always said.

You are the problem in this house.

I lay very still and looked at the ceiling.

I had heard that voice for three years, and I knew exactly how it ended.

The doctor's plan was on my phone, and I did not have to look at it.

Call Dane.

My thumb found his name before I had decided anything.

He picked up on the first ring.

"Callie."

"It's three in the morning," I whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm not going to do anything. I just can't be alone with it."

"Don't hang up. I'm coming."

I heard a bed creak through the wall, and then bare feet on the boards.

The call stayed open.

I heard him stop outside my door.

"I'm not coming in," he said, quietly, to the wood. "I'm just going to sit out here. All right?"

"All right."

The hall floor creaked as he sat down.

For a while neither of us said anything.

I turned on my side and put my cheek on the cold pillow.

Under the door, in the thin gap, a hand appeared.

It lay palm up on the floorboards.

It was a big hand with a healing cut across the knuckles and sawdust ground into the creases.

I looked at it for a long time.

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