The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
Outside, the sky was gray and heavy, the kind of cold that made the walls feel smaller. Rain tapped against the window in slow, uneven beats. Inside, a single desk lamp cast a warm glow over the blanket-wrapped boy hunched in bed, a novel open across his lap.
Jonathan Brandit.
Once a prodigy with boundless energy on the court.
Now a ghost in his own skin, legs paralyzed from the waist down after the accident.
He adjusted his position slowly—mechanically—his thin fingers turning the page of the old basketball novel he'd read a dozen times before. The one that kept him sane. The one she used to read to him.
But she wasn't here anymore.
So he read it himself.
The turning point chapter. The rise of Lucas Graves. Eyes scanning line after line, Jonathan paused as he came across something—barely a paragraph, tucked between two major scenes. An almost throwaway mention.
