I'm back in Montgues, smoke and ash burning my eyes and choking me. My surroundings are so vivid I can feel my lungs tightening as I struggle to breathe. I watch helplessly as the bookshop burns around me while I stand in the ruined doorway, flames licking my face, hair, and neck. I hear and feel myself coughing, my breath wheezing in my ears and rattling in my chest.

My voice is thin and reedy as I inhale to speak. "Hel—" I break off, covering my nose and mouth as I cough again. "Hello?" I call out, struggling to breathe, much less see, from the smoke filling my lungs and searing my eyelids.

When a few seconds go by without a response, I take a shallow breath before calling out again. "Dimitri? Noemi? It's Malia! Can you hear me?"

With each passing second, I inhale more smoke and lose hope. My eyes begin to water as my vision blurs, and I know I won't last much longer. Desperate, I fill my lungs with smoky air and yell as loud as I can. "DIMITRI! NOEMI! IT'S MALIA! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

I freeze as though I've hit a brick wall, my heart racing into my throat when I hear a pained and barely audible murmur from deeper inside the building. "M-Malia?" It's not Dimitri's accented tenor. It's not Noemi's melodic inflection either. But that makes no sense.

I'm in Montgues, in Dimitri and Noemi's bookshop. But that voice... No. It can't be.

I step through the wrecked building, sidestepping burning wooden beams and shattered glass from the windows. Screaming, I stop dead, clutching my heart as if to keep it from shattering. My world—my existence—shatters as I spot a face covered in soot and ash peeking out from behind a pile of charred beams. Will.

"Are you okay? Is—" My words die when I see Liv, lifeless in Will's left arm. His right arm is pinned beneath a burned beam; blood stains his sleeve, and the pain on his face confirms it's broken. The rise and fall of Liv's chest is the only sign she's still alive. Half her face is covered in blood, and—just as I open my mouth to shout for help—I notice the nasty wound on her temple.

"A wooden beam hit her on the head and knocked her out," Will says, his voice rough and weak. "She inhaled a lot of smoke. I've tried to wake her multiple times, but she won't respond." I see a wince cross his face as he looks at the arm trapped under the beam.

I look helplessly toward the front door, then back at Will. The glazed look in his eyes tells me he won't last much longer. As if to prove my point, he sways on his feet.

Without thinking, I lunge for him, taking his weight with a loud, pained grunt as I hop on my good foot. In my frantic, desperate dash inside, I've lost my crutch and am now walking on nothing but determination and adrenaline.

"Come—come on," I say to him, trying to breathe without inhaling more smoke. "We need—" I break off, coughing loudly. "We need to get you both out of here."

I cough again while waiting for him to respond. When I look at him, I shake my head furiously as I see his eyes flutter shut. His grip on Liv slackens, but by some miracle, she doesn't slip out of his arms. "No! Will, look at me! Open your eyes and look at me!"

I know what happened before I see his chest. It's still. My leg gives out as I collapse to the floor, Will and Liv going limp beside me. He's dead.

They are both dead. I'm alone. I'm going to die here. No one will know what happened to me.

My eyes snapped open, my pulse pounding wildly in my ears as I gasped for breath so hard my chest ached. Panicked, I kicked off the covers that began to smother me and lunged toward the window of the bookshop, desperate for fresh air. My choked, desperate words echoed in my mind and triggered a fresh wave of tears as I bit back a scream. "No! Will, look at me! Open your eyes and look at me!"

I couldn't stop trembling. If I closed my eyes, all I saw was Liv's lifeless body in Will's arms. The door opened as someone entered the room, but I didn't move. I couldn't. My right foot was stuck to the floor, my right arm strapped to my side as if in a straitjacket.

I pushed my head out of the open window, coughing as ash and smoke filled my eyes, nose, and mouth. Gentle hands steadied me as I realized I had gotten out of bed and hopped to the window without my crutch. I couldn't hold back the shriek that tore from my lungs. Blinking past the tears blurring my vision, I saw Julie's worried face out of the corner of my eye before realizing she was the one holding me upright.

"It's okay, sweetheart," she was saying, her voice soft and soothing. "I've got you. I've got you, honey. It's okay. Everything's okay."

I shook my head so violently it made the room spin. I felt more than saw Julie flinch when I started speaking. "No." The word was weak, forced out on a thin breath from a chest that felt incredibly tight. "No! Will, look at me! Open your eyes and look at me!"

The last word was a long, agonizing scream. My eyes flicked to a random bush outside the window, visions of the fire flickering before me, flames licking at my hair and skin. Julie's grip on my arm was gentle but firm, anchoring me—my body—to the present. Yet, my mind—miles away in another place—was trapped in a burning bookshop.

I was screaming, pleading, sobbing. I couldn't hear anything but my own frantic voice. My lungs seized as smoke and ash filled my mouth, cutting off my voice and trickling down my throat as I began coughing again. A new voice—gentle but firm—filled my ears. "Malia. This is a flashback. It's not real. I'm right here, my love. You're okay. I'm okay. We're all okay."

Will's voice grew louder and stronger, and I knew he was trying to drown out my sobs and gasps for air. "Malia, focus on the feel of my hand in yours. That's real. The sound of my voice is real. You are not in Montgues anymore. You are back in Chalmet. I'm right here, my love. I'm okay. I promise, I'm okay."

"No. No, you're not. I was... I was looking for your heartbeat. I couldn't... I couldn't find it. Why couldn't I find it?" I knew I was hysterical, but I couldn't seem to calm down.

My heartbeat was a crazy staccato, and my chest rose and fell rapidly as I struggled to breathe into lungs that were constricted. Julie slowly approached me with hands outstretched, like she was trying to calm a wounded animal. "It's okay, sweetie. Let's get you back into bed. Come on. I've got you." I flinched when she touched my arm but didn't pull away.

After I got back into bed, Will tried to pull me into his arms, but I lifted a trembling hand to stop him. "N-no." My heart stumbled every time I looked into his eyes; the Will from the nightmare and the Will in front of me merged until I couldn't tell one from the other. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped an arm around myself, digging my nails into my flesh.

Will nodded and withdrew his hands. It was only then that I realized Liv had entered the room, looking worriedly between him and me. "Okay. I won't touch you. But you're safe, Lia."

When I spoke again, I didn't recognize my own voice. It was small and weak—scared and uncertain. "Don't leave. Please don't leave. I'm tired of everyone leaving." I didn't name anyone, but I didn't have to. They knew who I meant.

A few moments passed before Julie spoke, her voice gentle. "If Malia feels up to it, she can be discharged. I'm going to see if I can get Dimitri and Noemi discharged as well. Do they have relatives we can contact, or somewhere they can go?" She looked from me to Will, her eyes searching our faces.

Will didn't look at me as he spoke, though I saw hesitation in his posture and heard it in his voice. "No. They're not from here. They're..." He trailed off, looking everywhere but at Julie before finally continuing. "They're foreign exchange students."

Technically, his words weren't a lie. They were foreign, and I'd planned to have Will and Julie help me enroll them in school, but unlike most foreign exchange students, they wouldn't leave after a few years. I knew he hated lying to his mother, but the truth would invite too many questions from her—questions we probably couldn't answer.

Julie nodded, but I could sense confusion in her voice. "Oh. Well, I'm sure we can help them get enrolled in school and with whatever else they need. Do you and Malia want to inform them of what I'm planning, or should I?" Again, I watched Julie's eyes flicker from Will's face to mine.

Will swallowed hard. "No. Lia and I can do it." He glanced at me, but I was already nodding. No way would I be separated from Will again—even just for him to walk across the hall. The mere thought tightened my chest painfully.

He stood and placed one hand protectively on my lower back, the other holding my hand firmly. We slowly walked—in my case, hobbled—to the door, slipping outside without a word. "Are you sure about this?" Will's lips brushed my hair, his breath tickling the shell of my ear.

I took a breath before nodding. "Yes. It's the right thing to do." Not only for Dimitri and Noemi, but for all of us. We all needed to heal—mentally, physically, and emotionally—from the events of the past several months. A few days ago, I hadn't been sure what that meant.

Now I did. Whether I slept on the couch in the living room while Dimitri and Noemi took the guest room, or Liv gave up her room and temporarily moved in with Will, they were coming to the Callahans' house.

With us. With me. When we got to Dimitri's room, I steeled myself before opening the door—before I said the words that would change all of our lives forever.