City lights bleed through Y/n’s apartment window, smearing yellow across the floor. She’s still in her work clothes, halfway through a glass of wine she didn’t really want, phone face-down on the coffee table.

It buzzes.

Briarfield area code.

She almost doesn’t answer.

She doesn’t remember grabbing her keys, or shoving clothes into a bag, or typing out a text to her boss that just says family emergency.

What she remembers is the highway.

Dark. Empty. Three hours of white lines and red taillights and a voice in her head repeating the same words:

You should’ve been there.

You should’ve answered.

You should’ve come home.

Briarfield Memorial looks smaller than she remembers.

Fluorescent lights hum overhead. The air smells like disinfectant and old coffee. A few people sit in the waiting room, but Y/n doesn’t see them. Not really.

She sees Maeve first.

Maeve is standing by the nurse’s station, arms crossed, gray streaking her dark hair like she aged ten years in one night. She’s still in stable clothes. Dirt on her boots. Hay stuck to her sleeve.

She stops at the doorway.

And there he is.

Nate Calloway.

Not on a horse. Not leaning against a truck with that crooked grin. Not standing under the barn light with hay in his hair and sawdust on his jeans.

He’s lying in a hospital bed, bruises coloring his jaw, his right arm bandaged from wrist to elbow, a machine breathing for him.

He looks smaller.

He looks tired.

He looks like the boy she left behind, except that boy was never supposed to break.

<Narrator>: The only sound is the steady beep of the heart monitor. The only movement is the slow rise and fall of his chest.

<Narrator>: Y/n stands in the doorway, hand gripping the frame like letting go means falling.