Page 6 of Seven Minutes
Daniel Shaw of Beatty, Shaw, and Faulkner. The firm I’d reached out to weeks ago when things started to fracture, when I still believed legal language could somehow contain heartbreak.
Mr. Hawke?—
We’ve finalized the separation agreement and are awaiting your confirmation to proceed. Please let us know when you’re available to discuss signing and next steps.
Next steps.
The phrase sat there on the screen, polite and devastating, like being told to move on from something that hadn’t even finished breaking.
My throat closed. The road in front of me blurred. I tried to take deep, calming breaths, but all I could see were the signatures—his and mine—side by side on a document that turned love into logistics.
The phone slid from my lap, hitting the floor mat with a dull thud.
I blinked. Once. Twice. The light ahead swelled too fast.
Headlights brighter than anything I’d ever seen erupted from the oncoming lane, bleaching the world white.
A horn blared, sharp and monstrous, shattering through the music still pounding through the speakers.
I gasped—half word, half plea—his name ripped from somewhere deep in me.
The tires screamed. The world tilted. Glass exploded, tiny stars raining through the air that sliced through my flesh like razor blades. The seatbelt cut through my shoulder a half second before the airbag punched through my chest, a brutal hit that knocked the wind out of me.
And then—nothing.
No light, no sound.
Just the echo of his name in the dark.
Darkness swallowed everything.Not the soft kind that comes before sleep, but jagged and absolute, like ink flooding the world, thick and suffocating. It pressed in on me, smothering sound, stealing air. For a heartbeat, I thought maybe this was it—that final, empty nothingness everyone fears but never speaks of.
But then it shifted.
Shadows rippled like water, folding in on themselves. Colors I couldn’t name flickered and vanished. A low hum vibrated through me, as though the world itself was winding down.
The low hum deepened until something sharper swallowedit. White-hot, otherworldly pain wrapped around every cell in my broken body. I felt it vibrate through my bones, felt my body stiffen, then falter.
A chemical antiseptic invaded my nose. A brightness that wasn’t light so much as pain seared behind my eyelids. The muffled roar of voices, urgent, overlapping, screamed in my ears.
“BP’s dropping?—”
“Get a line in—move, move?—”
And then one voice cut through it all, shattering the static.
“Eli.”
Adrian.
I forced my eyes open to see him right above me, face pale, eyes wild, his hands gripping mine with enough strength to anchor me by sheer will. I clung to his hand, or thought I did, my fingers twitching against his. I wanted to beg, to tell him I wasn’t ready, that I couldn’t leave him like this, but my tongue was heavy, my lungs locked. The harder I tried to hold on, the faster the world slipped from me.
“Hold on,” he pleaded, leaning close, his voice raw in a way I’d never heard. “Stay with me. Do you hear me? Stay.”
Adrian’s face loomed above me, his mouth moving, eyes wide, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. Not really. His voice came through warped, muffled, filtered through water.
The world stuttered and blurred around the edges. Cold flooded my veins. My body didn’t feel like mine anymore, ravaged by pain and sensations I couldn’t name. But his voice—that tether—dragged me back, one agonizing beat at a time.
And then everything lurched sideways, alarms screaming. Hisgrip tightened, desperate, as if he could fight the inevitable. The flatline screamed, a sound I felt more than heard, slicing straight through me. My body went slack, but my mind, God, my mind wouldn’t stop.
