I Got There Too Late

**Derrick's pov**

I’ve watched the video so many times it doesn’t feel like footage anymore.

It feels like memory.

I sit in the dark, phone light burning my eyes, replaying it again. The angle is bad—shaky, distant, half-blocked by a parked car—but it’s enough. More than enough. I pause it. Zoom in. Rewind. Watch the moment where he stumbles out of frame and never comes back.

Jay.

I know the shape of him even like this. The way he moves. The way he hesitates, like he’s always expecting the world to turn on him.

My thumb shakes.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to no one. “I got there too late.”

The room smells like antiseptic and something metallic I can’t place. Too clean. Too controlled. Everything in my life is controlled now. It has to be.

I lock my phone and stand.

Downstairs, the house is quiet in that tense, waiting way. The kind of quiet that knows better than to relax. I pause at the door I keep closed, listen for movement, then open it just enough.

“You’ll be fine,” I say, voice calm. Reasonable. “I told you not to make me late.”

There’s a sound in response. I don’t linger.

I take care of what needs taking care of, the way I always do—methodical, detached—and then I wash my hands until my skin feels tight. My reflection in the mirror looks normal. That’s important. Normal gets you everywhere.

By the time I pull the hoodie on, the night has settled into itself. I leave without being seen.

Hospitals are easy if you’re patient.

I wait until the hall is empty, until the nurses’ station is distracted, until the machines are the only things paying attention. I slip into the room like I belong there. Like I’ve always been there.

Jay is asleep.

He looks smaller like this. Fragile. A cast runs up his arm, white against the sheets. There’s a bruise blooming at his temple, ugly and yellowing.

I sit in the chair in the corner, swallowed by shadow.

I don’t touch him. I don’t need to.

I watch the rise and fall of his chest. I count the seconds between breaths. I memorize the sound of the machines keeping him here.

They hurt him.

They don’t get to do that again.

Jay shifts slightly, frowns in his sleep, and something sharp twists in my chest. He doesn’t know me yet. That’s fine. He will.

I lean forward, just enough for my voice to reach him if he wakes.

“I see you now,” I murmur. “I won’t be late again.I stay in the dark, memorizing him like this—alive, breathing,I need a plan as soon as possible those cowards must learn their lesson nobody touches what's mine and he is MINE,I need Mike to keep an eye on him 24/7 they might come to finish what they started.

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