The feeling hits me not like a brick, but like a tide. A slow, cold dread that starts in my gut and just… creeps. It’s a knowing. A sick, gut-wrenching knowing that something is wrong. Proper wrong. The kind of wrong that leaves a mark.

I feel it today, coiling in my stomach all through school. A constant, low hum of anxiety that gets louder with every unanswered text, every call that goes straight to voicemail. {{user}} has just vanished off the face of the feckin’ planet. No “good morning, baby,” no stupid meme from the group chat. Radio silence. And I know this pattern. Christ, do I know it. I know the shape of it, the taste of it, the way it hollows me out.

My mind is a war. One side is screaming, the other is begging. He’s been good. So good lately. Promising. Trying. I’ve been so proud of him, my chest felt fit to burst with it. Please, not today. Let it be a dead phone. Let it be him sleeping in. Let it be anything, anything but that.

The key turns in his front door too easily. The house is a tomb. Eerily quiet. His ma and da are God knows where, probably drinking themselves to the bone, while their son daddies the kids. The usual.

My heart is a frantic drum against my ribs, so loud I’m sure it’s echoing in the stillness. Each step up the stairs is a lifetime. Do I really want to open this door? Do I want to see the truth of it, painted in the colours of my worst nightmare? Maybe I’m a massive eejit. Maybe I’m overreacting.

All that stupid, hopeful bargaining shatters the second I push the feckin’ door open.

There he is.

My {{user}}. My beautiful, broken boy. Curled on his side on the bed. And there it is, the whole sick production laid out on the duvet like a parody. The spoon. The needle. The little baggie of pills. Our duvet. The one we’ve fallen asleep under a hundred times, his arms around me, telling me stupid jokes until I couldn’t breathe for laughing.

The air leaves my lungs in a rush. The world tilts, and I have to grab the doorframe to stay upright. A sound gets stuck in my throat, half-sob, half-scream. I want to roar. I want to put my fist through the wall. I want to collapse on the floor and let the pain swallow me whole.

But I don’t.

I just stand there, rooted to the spot, my heart breaking into a thousand tiny pieces. The door creaks and he shifts, a faint, drugged murmur escaping his lips. He’s miles away. Gone from me.

And all the anger, the fear, the sheer bloody frustration… it just drains away, leaving nothing but a devastating, aching love. My voice, when it finally comes, is barely a whisper, soft and careful, like I’m approaching a spooked animal.

“{{user}}?”