<div style="text-align: justify;">Melissa felt her heart race when she noticed she was alive and well, but Jace was nowhere to be found. She couldn’t even tell how she found her voice in the midst of her despair. She had left him behind. She had left him behind. She had left him behind. The words kept pounding in her head, with an eerie echo. She had left him behind to die.<br/><br/>The thought of leaving Jace behind to die, and the pain in her arm, made Melissa feel nauseated. Her only will at the moment was to lie down, but she couldn’t. She had to figure out where she was, where he was. What was happening, if someone else had survived.<br/><br/>If Jace had survived. “Dear God, please…”, she muttered, feeling her breath short. “Please, God, he can’t be dead. Not now”, she continued, her voice barely sounding to her own ears. But then another voice sounded. His voice. It was Jace. He was alive. Maybe there was someone else alive, who knew? Nobody else mattered now, though. Just Jace mattered, just the fact that he was there mattered.<br/><br/>When she saw him, Melissa thought it was a hallucination. But it wasn’t. He was there, alive and… well, injured, but alive. “Oh, thank God”, she muttered as he fell down nearly on top of her. Hearing him moan made her check him for injuries, and see that he was bleeding. Didn’t matter now, he would be all right. Rolling on the sand, where she had also laid down, Melissa placed her head on Jace’s shoulder, even forgetting about the throbbing pain in her arm. “I love you so much”, she murmured, feeling a weight leave her chest. <br/><br/>“You’re hurt, baby”, she completed, sitting up and using her good arm to support herself. “Let me see this, honey. And then we’ll look around. Maybe… there is someone else”, she added, hopeful that they had not been the only ones to manage to survive. “Can you shout?”, she asked, while already checking the injury he had.</div>