Between the moment Micah collapsed and the moment his eyes fluttered open again, only a few minutes slipped by. But those minutes stretched endlessly for Clyde, who hovered like a restless shadow. His knees pressed to the carpet beside the bed. His fingers twitched near Micah's shoulder, hesitant to touch, terrified it would be a cold and unresponsive body. His other hand gripped his phone so tightly the edges dug into his palm.
He kept staring at Micah's face, the pale lips, the faint crease between his brows as if a single blink or careless glance away would make Micah vanish.
"Don't you dare leave me…" Clyde muttered under his breath. The tranquillity he always wore vanished from his eyes, replaced by something crazed. The fear of losing Micah spread through every fibre of his body as if it had remembered it from the depths of his bones.
The screen of his phone showed a triple zero, yet Clyde had been drowned in his own world, unable to press the call button.
