CHAPTER 170

DECLAN

I didn’t have anything on my schedule—nothing to mark on the calendar, nothing to fill the endless hours that had stretched out ever since the boys went missing. It was as if time had stopped for me, frozen in that unbearable moment when I realized they were gone.

Lying on the bed with Hazel’s head resting on my thighs, I absentmindedly traced my finger along her jawline, the soft, almost r