Dane's POV :
The silence in the room is heavy, thick with the smell of the dying fire and the salt of her tears. Rain is slumped on the edge of the mattress, her head buried in her palms, her spine curved like a broken reed.
I can hear her breathing—laborious, wet, each inhale sounding like a struggle against a crushing weight on her chest.
The phone in my hand feels wrong. The plastic is slick with the sweat of my palms, so slippery I'm terrified my thumb will slip, that I'll accidentally swipe away the only proof I have that my daughter ever existed.
I take a jagged breath, forced and shallow, trying to shake the tremors out of my fingers. I flex my neck, the vertebrae popping like gunfire in the quiet room, trying to release the agonizing tension coiling in my traps.
I can feel the despair radiating off me in waves, a cold, dark tide that threatens to pull us both under.
I open the message thread.
