But even through the crushing weight of grief, something in Tyler solidified. Grief had carved out a hollow in his chest—but in that space, resolve began to bloom, fierce and immovable.
With sudden force, he stood.
Amelia flinched at the movement, startled.
He reached down and took both of her hands in his, gripping them tightly, like they were lifelines—his and hers. His eyes locked onto hers with a clarity that felt almost defiant, as if he were staring down the very hand fate had dealt them.
"Get up," he said, his voice steady but shaking at the edges with restrained urgency.
She blinked. "Where are we going?"
"To the hospital," he said, already moving toward the door. "We're starting treatment. Now. I'm not losing you. Not after everything. Not after Noah. Not after all the nights we swore we'd grow old together."
But just as his hand touched the doorknob, her voice—soft, almost ghostlike—cut through the moment.
"Tyler…"
He paused. Turned.
She hadn't moved. Still sitting at the edge of the bed, her hands limp in her lap, her gaze fixed on a patch of floor like it held the truth she couldn't speak aloud.
"You can't fix this with determination," she said. "It's not a broken pipe, or a late bill, or another one of your impossible deadlines. It's inside me. Quiet. Unseen. Eating me alive. And I don't even know how long it's been there."
He stood frozen, hand still resting on the knob, the wood beneath his palm cool and unyielding. Slowly, he turned, his expression softening, warping under the weight of her words.
"You think I don't know that?" he said, quieter now. "You think I'm not terrified too?"
Finally, she looked at him.
And there it was—etched into her face, in the set of her jaw, the tremble of her lower lip—not just fear.
But shame.
Her voice was brittle as dried leaves. "I forgot Noah's bottle yesterday."
Tyler frowned, his breath catching.
"I was holding it," she continued, "I had it in my hand… and then—I blinked, and it was gone. I found it hours later. In the linen closet. With the towels." She gave a small, broken laugh. "I don't even remember walking there."
She looked down again, like it hurt to hold his gaze.
"It's starting," she whispered. "The forgetting. The pieces… they're slipping away."
And for a moment, the silence between them was absolute.
Then Tyler moved—not like before, not with desperation, but with reverence, with something gentler than hope. He returned to her side and knelt—not in panic, not in shock, but in something quieter: surrender. Not to the disease, but to the moment, to her pain, to what they were now.
He reached for her hand and placed it against his chest, pressing her palm flat over the rapid thrum of his heartbeat.
"Then remember this," he said softly. "This rhythm. This heartbeat. It's yours. It always has been. When your mind forgets, let your heart remember. I'll remind you of everything else."
Tears welled in her eyes again, but this time they fell silently—not from fear, but from the unbearable tenderness in his voice.
He wrapped his arms around her again, not to fix, not to rescue—but to stay. To promise.
And outside, the world kept turning. But inside their small room, time held its breath for them.
"Then I'll be your memory."
His voice didn't waver—it was fierce, almost defiant. A vow, not made with grandeur, but with quiet certainty born of love weathered by storms.
"I'll remember for you, Amelia," he continued, kneeling before her like a knight making a sacred pledge. "Every damn bottle. Every smile. Every lullaby you ever sang, even the off-key ones when you were too tired to keep your eyes open. I'll hold all of it—for both of us."
She tried to speak, but the weight in her throat was too heavy. Another sob trembled in her chest, caught halfway between heartbreak and disbelief.
Her voice cracked as she whispered, "And when I forget your name, Tyler? When I look into your eyes… and I don't know you?"
He didn't flinch. Instead, he smiled—soft, unshaken—but his eyes glistened with the same tears she hadn't yet allowed herself to shed fully.
"Then I'll fall in love with you all over again," he said. "Every single day, if that's what it takes."
A fragile sound escaped her lips—part laughter, part sob. Her face crumpled beneath the weight of it all: the fear, the sorrow, and the sudden, aching warmth of being so profoundly loved in the face of something so cruel.
And then the laughter gave way to tears, and the tears to laughter again—messy, broken, human. It was the kind of love that doesn't live in poetry or promises, but in battlefields and hospital rooms and sleepless nights. A love that chooses. Again and again.
Tyler rose, no longer kneeling now, but standing tall. He pulled her into him, gently but firmly, like he meant to hold her together when she could no longer do it herself. His arms closed around her, and he buried his face in her hair, breathing her in like it might steady the trembling inside his chest.
"We'll fight, Amelia," he whispered. "Not because it's easy. Not because we're fearless. But because you're worth the fight. So is Noah. And so is the life we've built—every inch of it. Every page of our story."
And though the darkness still lingered at the edges, though nothing had changed in the diagnosis or the odds, something shifted inside her—a flicker, small but alive.
Because even as the pieces of her threatened to fall away, he was there, catching them. Memorizing them. Loving them enough to carry them forward.