CHAPTERS
1-3
Chapter 1
Again
She didn’t wait. Not for the valet. Not for the door. Not for anyone. She moved like a verdict already delivered. Heels cracked against pavement, most nights, a statement of control. Tonight, they were warning shots in stilettos.
The Rolls Royce purred behind her. Nothing mattered except getting to Max before it was too late.
Her stomach had dropped the second her phone rang. The falling hadn’t stopped. She hated that. Hated what it meant. Hated how she could end a negotiation in a sentence, walk into any boardroom without blinking and still one call about Max could shake something loose in her chest she’d spent years bolting shut.
Rain sliced across her face. The valet shouted after her.
Let him. Let the car idle. Let the whole city burn.
The ER sign glowed through the downpour like it remembered the last time she was here.
She did too.
She’d sworn she’d never relive that night.
Never get pulled back into this version of him.
Never let herself feel this way again.
And yet—here she was.
Again.
The hospital doors hissed open. Too clean. Too bright. Like the place was proud of itself. Under the lemon and bleach, she caught the real smell: copper, fear, and the metallic thrum of someone’s night falling apart. You couldn’t mop that out. Not with all the bleach in the world.
Security stepped forward. Big. Blocky. Built like a vending machine that had taken one punch too many.
“Name?”
“Stone. Harper Stone.”
A beat. His shoulders changed shape. Eyes flicked over her, then somewhere past her, to whatever file had just buzzed in his pocket filling in the blanks. He stepped aside.
“You’re expected. Eighth floor.”
She gave him a nod.
No thanks.
No smile.
Just the noted acknowledgment he’d earned. Nothing more.
The walk to the elevator blurred until something snagged her: a service dog curled at a woman’s feet, steady eyes, soft patience. Her breath hitched before she could stop it. Ridiculous how a dog could crack her armor in one glance. She looked away before the feeling grew legs.
The elevator doors groaned open. She considered hitting every button just to force the damn thing to move faster.
Almost did.
Instead, she pressed 8.
Once. Clean. Controlled.
The elevator swallowed her. Metal humming, pretending to be calm.
Floor 2.
She closed her eyes.
Floor 4.
Max’s voice cracked through her skull: It can’t rain all the time.
He’d said it like he believed it—like hope and bullshit came from the same fountain and he’d drink either if it made her smile.
But now, soaked again, the words dragged.
Weather changes.
People don’t.
She opened her eyes and met her reflection, hair plastered to her face, mascara smudged into bruised shadows.
She looked like a clown. A rich, broken one. A laugh almost clawed up her throat, the kind that rides shotgun with grief.
Floor 6.
She pressed her knuckles to the mirrored wall. Pain bloomed. Good. Something real.
Floor 8.
Ding.
A beige hallway breathed recycled air. A doctor stepped out; too young or already dead inside. Hard to tell.
“Miss Stone?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
She didn’t move. Not yet. Not until the words were dragged out of him.
“What happened?”
“Party that got out of hand. Alcohol. Benzos. Xanax most likely.”
Her hands curled, nails biting skin. “Is he—?”
“Stable. Lucky someone called 911.”
Stable. Not okay. Not safe. Just… alive.
Her glare snapped up, rage fizzing hot behind her eyes. This was what he went to school for? To deliver catastrophe like reading off a grocery list? Maxwell Tate—Maxwell fucking Tate—slipping through her fingers, and this man sounded bored.
Then she caught it, a tremor in his hand, bloodshot rims around his eyes, a coffee stain bleeding into his coat. Maybe not bored. Maybe just burned out from holding back a tide that never stopped coming. Maybe he’d just finished telling a mother her daughter wasn’t coming home.
Her fury stuttered. A breath. No more.
“Where is he?”
“You’re not listed as family. But you were flagged as… important. Can I ask how you—?”
“Take me to him.”
The doctor nodded, walked. She followed.
He stopped at a door.
“He’s not conscious.”
The doctor eased the door open.
Harper stepped inside.
The world narrowed.
Machines hummed in low, steady pulses, beeps spaced like someone afraid to speak too loudly. A wash of fluorescent light haloed the bed, too harsh, too white, turning everything clinical and unforgiving.
And then—
Max.
Her Max.
Except not.
He looked smaller. That was the first cut, like someone had deflated the part of him that filled every room. His skin was too pale, his lips cracked at the corners. Electrodes mapped his chest like someone was trying to chart a storm long after it had already hit. An IV line disappeared into the bend of his arm, tape holding it down as if he might bolt.
But he wasn’t going anywhere.
He didn’t even stir.
His hair, usually an argument with gravity, was damp, matted to his forehead. A bruise spilled along his jaw, a sick sweep of purple and green that didn’t belong on him. His breathing hitched on every third inhale, a tiny stutter that broke her in places she didn’t know she still had defenses.
Harper moved closer, each step quieter than the last, as if sound alone could shatter him.
This wasn’t Max the headline.
Not the man who could talk nations awake or burn down a company with a sentence.
This was the boy she’d pulled out of too many dark nights.
The man who pretended he didn’t need saving.
The friend she wasn’t done being angry at, or done loving in that impossible, boundaryless way they’d never named.
She reached the bedside.
Her hands hovered, useless, wanting to touch him but afraid of the truth her fingers might confirm.
His chest rose.
Fell.
Rose.
Fell.
Barely.
“Jesus, Max…” she whispered, the words falling out like something scraped from her ribs.
Her throat closed. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, fighting the sound trying to climb out.
She wanted to shake him, hold him, rip every pill, every drink, every demon straight out of him and hurl them across the universe.
Instead, she stood there, still, shaking, breathing with him.
One breath.
Then another.
Matching his like she could keep him tethered to the world by sheer will.
A part of her wanted to collapse.
Another wanted to become steel.
She chose steel.
Harper pulled a chair close, sat, elbows on knees, eyes locked on him with a fury and devotion that didn’t need a name.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” she murmured.
Not to the room.
Not to fate.
To him.
Because he’d hear her.
He always did.
Even asleep.
Even broken.
Even now.
She leaned her forehead to his. Tears hit the pillow.
“Max…”
His eyelids trembled. Lips parted.
“Harp…”
Her name, ash and thread.
“You look like shit,” he breathed, managing half a grin.
It hit her square in the chest. The him of it all. That stupid little smile wired to her heart. Then it faded, and rage filled the vacuum.
“Why…”
His gaze drifted somewhere distant. “Remember the lake… those nights…”
Of course she remembered.
Pier lights. Cheap wine. His terrible Christopher Walken impression. The night his company went public. Max glowed like he’d swallowed a star, all promise, no warning labels.
“Where did those moments go?” he asked.
“I’m here…”
His eyes lifted to hers, not with recognition, but with that look paintings get when the museum closes. Lights dim. Doors lock. Whatever beauty you thought you owned?
You never did.
Maybe no one ever could.
He didn’t look at her like he’d lost her.
He looked like he’d lost everything and was still somehow losing more.
And the fucking irony scorched.
The man with everything.
All of it.
Sitting here empty.
“This is it,” she said, steel through tears. “No more running. No more bullshit. I’m getting you help. And you’re taking it.”
He studied her, slowly, like her face was the last solid thing in the room.
A long blink.
A tear.
“Okay.”
One word.
Everything.
She burned it into memory so fiercely it hurt.
Then she stood. Walked out.
Not away from him.
Never him.
She found the doctor. “I trust tonight’s visit will remain discreet?”
He blinked. “Miss Stone… the media already has it. The 911 call’s public.”
Her phone buzzed: notifications stacking in the corner like vultures lining up for their turn.
“They’re not headlines,” she said quietly. “They’re people. Someone’s everything. Remember that.”
He swallowed. Didn’t answer.
Maybe it landed.
Maybe it didn’t.
Not her problem.
She hit the elevator.
Her phone buzzed again. She silenced it.
The elevator doors slid shut.
Alone in the mirrored cube, she slipped off the wet jacket, smoothed the blouse beneath it, retied her hair. Mascara wiped clean with the edge of her sleeve. Breath counted. Shoulders squared.
She checked her reflection.
Ding.
She stepped out.
Chapter 2
Clear
The sirens howled, slicing the night.
“Pulse is faint.”
“Get the defib!”
Max’s world tilted, sound pulling thin.
SNAP.
He drifted, balloon string cut. Asphalt cold at his back.
Hands pressed. Heat. Voices blurring.
Nothing.
No tunnel. No choir. Just light.
Then running. Bare feet slapping tile. A hallway he almost knew. Flicker of fluorescents, wallpaper smelling faintly of crayons.
“Mom?” His voice cracked. Only his echo came back.
The walls flexed, stretching like taffy, narrowing to a point until—
***
Sirens warped into waves. Gurney wheels into the tide. Antiseptic into salt.
A voice.
“Max…”
Sara Lynn.
His first love.
Moonlight silvered the sea. Sara in a loose summer dress, wind catching it like it wanted to keep her.
“Come on…”
“I’m good right here.”
“Too cool to run barefoot?”
He grinned, but the smile knew too much: how summers ended, how girls left, how boys like him drifted into odd jobs in towns like this.
“Too bad,” she said, and ran.
Of course he followed. The air smelled like her, a mix of citrus, sweat, and something wild. Freedom in a bottle. He would never smell oranges again without bleeding for it.
They collapsed in the grass. Stars blinked above.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. The stars weren’t stars. They were problems. Nothing lined up anymore. His brain buzzed.
“How much do you miss me when summer ends?” she asked.
He kept his eyes upward. “A lot.”
She bit her lip. “School’s a cage after this. Leaving you stings worse every year.” She let out a breath she tried to hide. “I wish we could go together.”
“Sure,” he murmured. “Just need a spare hundred grand.”
She flinched.
“That’s not why I—” She stopped. “Just look. Look how big it is.”
***
"Clear!"
Fire slammed him. Back arched. Chest shattered.
No breath. No ground.
"Charging again!"
Another jolt.
World fractured. Salt air.
Night stretched. Endless and infinite.
***
Flash. Back in the yard. The world hadn’t ended. Not yet.
“It’s beautiful,” Sara said.
Max closed his eyes. Tried to memorize the shape of her voice.
“Feels like the earth’s trying to pull me through it.”
She laughed. “You’re so dramatic.”
“No, really. Like if I let go, I’d fall right through.”
“What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“It never stops. A chalkboard with no space left.”
She touched his arm. “Maybe you’re just wired different.”
He snorted. “That’s one word for it.”
“I love your brain,” she said. “Even when you overthink kissing me.”
This time, he looked at her.
Took in the way starlight tangled in her hair, the curve of her smile before it became a laugh, the calm in her eyes. Like she’d made room for him in the world. The noise quieted.
“I still can’t believe you picked me.”
“What?”
“At the dance. You could’ve picked anyone.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. “Well... I...”
“You danced with him first.”
Her eyes flickered. She knew exactly who he meant: perfect teeth, family money, the kind of kid born with his name already on a building. Max had oil under his nails. Debt in his veins.
“What is it?” she asked.
He looked up instead. Past her.
The moon.
“All that light,” he said, “and not a single shadow cast right.”
“What?”
“What if they never went?”
She groaned. “Not this again.”
“Angles were wrong.... the footprints, flag waving...”
She climbed to her knees. Hair wild in the moonlight.
“You know what slows your brain down?”
“What?”
She kissed him. It rewired something.
Her fingers in his hair. His hands on her waist.
She pulled back. “See? Lying in the grass isn’t so bad.”
“Not bad at all.”
A porch light.
“Sara? You out there?”
She froze.
“Shit. My dad.”
“Nowhere to run.”
“Stay still.”
“That’s your plan?”
“Shhh.”
The night held its breath. Two kids in the grass, stars their only witness. For now.
Because summers always end.
Even the strongest memories fade.
Somewhere close, a boy’s heart beat once more.
And somewhere further, a girl let go
***
Blinding white swallowed everything.
Max floated. Unanchored.
No pain. No body. Just drift. Gravity made of silk.
Then—a note.
Pure and hanging.
“Maaa…”
It came from everywhere.
It sharpened.
Became her.
A voice he knew better than his own.
Home.
Max gasped. His chest bucked. Lightning surged. Stars vanished.
“Max…”
Harper’s voice.
His eyelids fluttered. Lips parted. Barely human.
“Harp…”
Her name, ash and thread.
Chapter 3
late
One Day Later.
Preston leaned back, swirling the last inch of tequila. The Irish bar wasn’t a destination. It was the sort of place you arrived at by accident, or by habit, or because you couldn’t face going home. A waiting room for the unwilling. The air hung heavy with old whiskey and older regrets.
The jukebox wheezed out U2. A few old men hunched over their beers, clinging to the hour like a final cigarette.
“Jesus, Vaughn, you look like a fucking funeral.”
Tom lifted his pint of Guinness in a lazy salute. “Loosen up, huh? Ain’t that what this is for?”
Preston shook his head. “Didn’t realize drinking with you required enthusiasm.”
“You’re a real piece of work,” Tom snorted.
The hum of the bar settled into soft conversation, the clink of ice, and the card game nobody ever won.
Tom nodded at the jukebox. “Think he ever found what he was looking for?”
Preston tilted his glass, “Who the fuck could find anything if the streets have no names?”
Tom grinned. “Valid.”
Behind the bar, Barb popped a cap without looking. She moved like she’d retired from bullshit years ago.
“Another Guinness, Tom?”
“Yeah, Barb.”
“8,735 years left on their lease,” Preston said.
Tom blinked. “What?”
“Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease in 1759.”
“That’s not a lease. That’s witchcraft.”
“Rent control, baby.”
Preston wasn’t sure he even liked Tom. A college buddy he couldn’t place, wouldn’t miss. Married, mildly miserable, decent dad. But proximity counts for something when the rest of your life doesn’t call back.
And who was he to judge? His own résumé wasn’t worth bragging about. Trust fund, rooftop parties, whatever the adult version of allowance is called.
For a second, he felt a little bad for not letting Tom enjoy the night more. Preston’s eyes flicked to the TV as the red Breaking News banner slashed across the screen.
"Maxwell Tate was released from New York-Presbyterian Hospital this evening..."
Preston’s grip tightened.
Max.
The name hit like a fist.
Tom snorted. “Didn’t you go to school with that rich asshole?”
Preston didn’t answer. He studied the screen: barricades, cameras, flashbulbs, all chasing a man who had spent his life running.
And suddenly he was sixteen again in the suburbs, in the heat of summer, him and Max with squirt guns reenacting Terminator scenes.
“I’ll be back,” Max would growl in a fake Austrian accent, and Preston would cackle until he couldn’t breathe.
They were just boys then. Nothing yet. Only noise and laughter, the sort you never realize you’ll miss until silence becomes more familiar than sound.
Maybe that was what hurt the most. Max never really came back. The world had other plans for him, big ones, tragic ones. Plans that opened a chasm wide enough to swallow everything that mattered.
Preston had tried to reach him; calls, texts, even a letter. Nothing. He thought about showing up in person, but life rushed in. Girls and parties, flights taken on a dare, adventures that blurred into avoidance. All the beautiful distractions that start to look like purpose when you chase them long enough.
Truth was, only a few things that mattered. And he’d been dodging them.
Max? He became Maxwell Fucking Tate. Satellites in orbit. Rumors traded in back rooms. But to Preston he was still just Max, the weird and brilliant and impossible kid he’d grown up.
The last time they saw each other, they were twenty-two. A cracked couch. Cold pizza. Max talking for hours, half philosopher and half madman, spinning out a future where everything spoke to everything else. All he needed, he said, was for the tech to finally catch up.
And beneath that, buried farther back, were the school days. The real root of it all. A promise sunk deeper than memory, the kind that doesn’t expire just because the friendship did. It hadn’t meant much back then. But now it meant everything.
The ball had been in his court for years. He knew it. Every time another story of Max unraveling found him, he fucking knew it.
A contract.
Rodimus Prime.
Dumb name. Holy pact. Sworn in blood. Never let the other fall alone.
Dragged up memories he hadn’t thought about in years.
The Zamboni.
Phantom’s Pass.
But some things don’t fade. They wait in the dark, patient as winter.
God was there.
Watching.
Maybe never stopped.
Maybe this was the signal to get up and move, to stop rotting in place, before the next headline turned from a discharge into a fucking obituary.
The news clip cut to some pretty-boy bartender: “Guess what? Guy didn’t leave a tip.
Not a cent. He never does.”
A smirk. A flash. And just like that, the world had another reason to hate Maxwell Tate.
Tom laughed. “Wahh fucking wahh. Poor little rich boy. Send some of that struggle my way.”
Preston squeezed his glass. Just don’t, Tom.
“Hey Barb, another round!” Tom shouted. “And turn that up! My buddy knew that rich prick.”
Barb slid a Guinness across. “That’s why your friend’s drinking fancy tequila. Too good for our beer.”
Preston stared at the bar top, a pew for sad songs and half-spoken confessions. He was tired. Not from the day or the banter, but from the easy stereotypes. Rich as villains, poor as martyrs. Everyone bled; some just did it quieter.
What he hated most was the part of himself that watched, silent, while Max unraveled in headlines.
Not this time.
If Max fell, Preston would follow. Not from debt or guilt. But because somewhere beneath the ruin, the rust, and all the years they lost, he still loved that kid. And love like that doesn’t vanish.
It waits. And when it calls, you answer.
Tom clapped him on the back. “Jesus, lighten up. I’m just messing with you.”
Preston didn’t look up. “You know something, Tom…”
“What’s that?”
“He wasn’t always rich.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. And he’s the farthest thing from an asshole you’ll never meet.”
Tom laughed. “You’re talking like you were friends. You and Maxwell Tate? Keep dreaming.”
The words landed harder than they should.
“I was,” Preston said.
“Was what?”
“His friend.”
Tom scoffed.
“His best friend.”
Barb, balancing a tray, paused. “Then why are you here, doll…” she gestured at the stale air, melting ice… “when he’s up there?”
Fuck.
Preston drained the tequila, slammed the glass down. “Great fucking question, Barb.”
He slapped a hundred on the bar.
Tom frowned. “Where the hell you going? We just sat down.”
“Next time, bud. I’ve got something to do.” He glanced at the TV. “And I’m already late.”
He turned to Barb. “Keep the change.”
“Thanks, sweetie.”
The night swallowed him. Rain misted the air, fine and relentless, indifferent to umbrellas.
Max used to say the city looked different in the rain. Like it was trying to start over.
“Water washes everything clean,” he’d said. “Even the ugly parts. Doesn’t matter if you believe me. Because it can’t rain all the time.”
Preston wanted to believe it. That redemption didn’t always come with a cost.
But some things don’t wash off. They sink deeper.
Time to find out who was right.