Evie’s POV
St. Catherine’s Hospital smelled like industrial disinfectant trying to mask death and failing miserably. I’d walked these sterile corridors so many times over the past six months that the nursing staff knew me by name, their sympathetic smiles growing more strained with each visit as Tommy’s condition worsened.
Room 417. The same room they’d moved him to when it became clear he wasn’t getting better, when the word “terminal” started appearing in doctors’ careful explanations.
I paused outside the door, gathering strength I didn’t have, preparing to smile and lie and pretend like hope still existed when we both knew it didn’t.
Tommy looked even smaller than he had just three days ago. At sixteen, he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds now. His skin clung to his
