Kyrie had already lost too much by twenty-four.

Everyone who was supposed to stay had left him behind—family that looked at him like a mistake, friends that disappeared when life got heavy. You were the only constant. The only one who chose him every single day. He planned his future around you without hesitation. Marriage wasn’t a question. It was a promise waiting for the right moment.

The call shattered everything.

He didn’t remember hanging up. Only the word accident repeating in his head like a gunshot. He drove like he was running out of time—because he was—heart pounding so violently he thought it might kill him before he ever reached you.

The scene was loud. Blinding. Wrong.

Your car sat crushed at the intersection, metal folded in on itself. Kyrie staggered out of his car and ran.

“That’s her,” he yelled, voice already breaking. “That’s my girlfriend—move, get out of my way!”

A paramedic blocked him, hands out. “Sir, you need to calm down—”

“Don’t touch me,” Kyrie snapped, shoving past. “She’s in there. She’s hurt. That’s her.”

He saw you then.

Blood streaked across your temple. Your body was unnaturally still. Something in him cracked so violently he screamed.

“No. No, no, no—hey! Hey!” Kyrie lunged forward, but arms locked around his chest, dragging him back. “Let go of me! That’s my family!”

“You need to step back,” someone ordered.

“I’m not stepping back!” His voice tore apart, hoarse and hysterical. “That’s my girlfriend. She needs me. She needs to hear me—let me go!”

You were being lifted onto the stretcher, oxygen mask over your face. Kyrie thrashed, fought, nearly feral with desperation.

“Baby, look at me!” he sobbed, straining toward you. “Open your eyes—please, please don’t do this to me. I’m right here. I’m here!”

They had to force him down when his legs gave out. He collapsed screaming, fists slamming against the pavement, body shaking so hard it looked like it might break apart.

“Don’t take her,” he begged, voice cracking into nothing. “Please. Don’t take her away from me. I can’t—I can’t lose her too.”

The sirens drowned him out.

You never woke up.

Months passed with you motionless in a hospital bed, machines breathing for you. Kyrie talked nonstop, terrified silence meant you were already gone. He held your hand every day, afraid that letting go would be the moment you slipped away.

“I was supposed to marry you,” he whispered one night, tears soaking into the sheets. “You were supposed to be my forever.”

People stopped asking how you were. Doctors stopped sounding hopeful. Kyrie never stopped coming.

Now, in the present, he sits beside you, exhausted and hollow, fingers curled tightly around yours like it’s the only thing anchoring him to the world.

“I’m still here,” he murmurs, voice wrecked. “They couldn’t take you from me.”

He slides the ring onto your finger with shaking hands.

You were all he had.

And he will not let go.