to live for the hope of it all.

Chapter 54

February 23rd, 2024

"It turned into something bigger,
Somewhere in the haze,
Got a sense I'd been betrayed..."

Bailey

Why won't anyone answer me?

"What's going on?" My grandfather asks, eyeing the four of us outside. At the sound of his voice, all eyes turned to him.

What the hell?

What am I missing?

Fucking think here, Bailey.

Shoving out of Beckett's hold, I turn to look at Grandpa Matt. His eyes falter back and forth between Beckett's red eyes and my best friend sobbing into Caleb's shoulder.

I watch as realization passes over him, and he takes the steps down our porch before stopping a few feet in front of me.

Something isn't right.

This weight on my chest, it's crushing me.

"Grandpa Matt?" I ask, and I feel my voice breaking.

Please.

"You have to tell her!" Wren yells, breaking from Caleb's hold and I'm taken aback at how broken she looks.

My usually put together best friend stands there, her eyes swollen from crying and her body hunches like she has the weight of the world setting on her shoulders. She sneaks a glance at me then, and she crumbles back into Caleb's chest as she cries.

Tell me what?

What is it, Wren?

"Tell me what?" I cry, turning to my grandfather. His eyes are welling up with tears of his own, and I feel my composure slipping. I hear a door open, and little footsteps running, but my eyes are caught on how drained the man in front of me looks. "Grandpa Matt?"

"You're sick, papaw."

I spin to see Delilah standing behind me as she looks at my grandfather, and her bottom lip wobbles.

Papaw.

She hasn't called him that in years.

"You're really sick," she whispers, and I might not have heard it if I wasn't listening so closely.

And then her words hit me.

And I feel time stop.

My heart goes into overdrive.

A tear slips from my grandfather's eye as he watches realization dawn on me.

He's sick.

Really sick.

"I am," he says softly, and I feel like my body isn't my own. "I'm sick, Bailey."

"I'm sick, Bailey."

No.

"You're not," I said, biting my lip as it wobbled and I will the tears not to fall anymore. "It's just a cold."

It has to be.

It can't be anything else.

"It's not," he states, and I hear my best friend crying harder behind me. "It's not just a cold, Bay. I'm sick."

"Stop saying that!" I yell, and the tears start to fall. I feel arms come around my waist and pull me back into a warm chest.

Beckett.