the fire between us

chapter 46

⚠️ Content Warning: This narrative contains intense themes, including a car accident, panic attacks, anxiety, and physical injuries. Readers who may be sensitive to topics related to trauma, emergency situations, or mental health distress should proceed with caution. Please take care of your well-being, and feel free to pause or step away if needed. Your mental health is important. ⚠️

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We go inside, and everything is just like we left it when we headed off to Oslo. It's quite the chaos—clothes scattered across the couch, half-read books left open on the coffee table, and dishes in the sink from our last-minute breakfast. But despite the mess, the place is filled with memories. I can almost hear the laughter from the night before we left, the late-night talks we had sitting on the floor, planning our trip.

Martinus and I come down the stairs, our footsteps soft against the wood, the familiar creak under the second-to-last step still there, reminding us how much we've lived in this space. It feels like home again, chaos and all.

"Are you guys hungry?" Gert-Anne's voice breaks through the heavy silence, pulling me from the fog of my thoughts. I blink, disoriented for a moment, my mind still tangled in the memories of everything that's happened—the crash, the hospital, the panic.

"Yeah, a little," Marcus answers quietly, though there's a hollowness in his voice that wasn't there before. He's trying to keep it together, like we both are, but I can see the strain in his eyes, the weight he's carrying. I force a small smile, but it doesn't reach my eyes. I don't know if I'm even hungry, but everything feels so disconnected that I can't tell what I'm feeling at all.

"We're gonna go get pizza," Kjell-Erik says, offering a small smile before they all quietly gather their things—Emma, Gert-Anne, and Kjell-Erik. As they walk out, the room feels impossibly quiet, the absence of their presence leaving a strange emptiness behind.

Now it's just me and Marcus.

The silence between us is heavy, filled with the unsaid. My chest tightens, a familiar ache that I've been pushing down since the accident. I glance at him, and for a moment, neither of us says anything. His eyes meet mine, and I can see the exhaustion etched into his features, the pain that he's trying to keep hidden. It feels like we're both barely holding on, like if one of us breaks, the other will too.

My throat tightens with the flood of emotions I've been keeping at bay. The fear, the guilt, the helplessness—it all threatens to spill over. I swallow hard, but the lump in my throat doesn't go away. "I... I don't know if I can do this," I whisper, my voice cracking, my hands trembling in my lap.

Marcus shifts closer, his hand finding mine, his touch warm and grounding. "You don't have to do it alone," he murmurs, his voice steady, even though I know he's hurting too. "We'll get through this, Y/N."

Tears sting my eyes, and this time, I don't try to stop them. I let them fall, the weight of everything crashing over me. Marcus pulls me into his arms, and I bury my face in his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his embrace as I finally let myself break.

"I never meant for the car to crash," I sob, my voice barely a whisper against Marcus's shoulder. The words spill out before I can stop them, raw and jagged, carrying the weight of the guilt I've been carrying since the moment we spun off the road. My body trembles, and I grip his shirt tightly, as if letting go would mean falling apart completely.

Marcus holds me tighter, his hand rubbing slow, soothing circles on my back. "It wasn't your fault," he says quietly, his voice low but steady. "Y/N, it wasn't your fault."

But I can't shake the feeling that it was. That somehow, I should've done something—anything—to stop it. My mind replays the crash over and over, every second seared into my memory: the screech of the tires, the moment everything spun out of control, the terror that gripped me when I realized I couldn't fix it.