THE FREE FALL ⇘ Bellamy Blake. [1]

| xlii. DARK MATTER

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CHAPTER FOURTY TWO;

DARK MATTER.

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BELLAMY BLAKE'S GLARE SEARED HELLFIRE INTO THE HEAVENS THEMSELVES, his eyes smoldering with a dark, desperate fury as he cursed the stars above. He longed to pulverize them, to grind their silvery glow into cosmic dust under his clenched fists. If he could, he'd reach into the universe and wrench every supernova from its celestial throne, tearing through the fabric of the galaxies until they surrendered a path that led straight to the girl he loved. It was a cruel, merciless jest—the idea that such grand tools of navigation sprawled endlessly above him, yet offered not a single clue . . . not even the faintest whisper of where Haven had been stolen from him.

If the very constellations that the duo had poured over for hours, studying from the windows of the Ark, tracing their patterns during medical appointments that ran for hours—if those same stars could not guide him back to her . . . then why did they get to exist at all? What cosmic force had given them the audacity to shine so brilliantly, so mockingly, in a world without her presence?

It was wrong.

        Everything was fucking wrong.

Bellamy had always known it was possible to feel everything at once. His rage simmered alongside his sorrow, each feeding into the other in a vicious, unbreakable cycle. His grief intertwined with his own self-destruction, a dark dance that spun him closer to the edge with every twist and turn. Even his brightest moments were poisoned, perpetually shadowed by the inescapable specter of dread.

The only time Bellamy ever felt truly whole, where the storm inside calmed and the frayed edges knitted back together . . . it was with Haven.

        It was always with Haven.

       She was the light that reached into the darkest recesses of his soul, the parts of himself he had long banished to the shadows. She stared straight through his perpetual bullshit and forced him to confront the entirety of his existence—every raw, untempered emotion laid bare, free from the shackles of rejection or judgment. Her presence did not soothe the tempest of his emotions; rather, it stoked them, magnifying each facet of his being with ferocious clarity.

And yet, he didn't flinch away.

With Haven . . . Bellamy didn't shrink from himself. He didn't avert his eyes from the reflections she mirrored back to him. In her eyes, every shadowed corner, every fractured piece of his psyche was not merely observed but deeply acknowledged, embraced, and accepted—even if it meant she had to forcefully shove him into a riverbank to yank his head out of his ass. Her love was both a challenge and a balm—it spurred him to do better, to be better.