“I never meant for this to happen. I never meant to hurt you?—”
“But you did!” She cried. “And now some girl I don’t even know gets to have your child? You think sorry fixes that?”
He was quiet. That silence hurt worse than anything else.
“Say something,” she choked out. “Say something real.”
“I’m sorry, Prin,” he murmured. “That’s all I got.”
Her heart cracked like thin glass.
“Don’t call me that again,” she said, voice shaking. “Don’t call me anything.”
She wiped her eyes, and her hands trembled.
“Don’t ever contact me again, Zay. I mean it. I hate you. You ruined everything. You ruined me.”
She quickly clicked the end button and hung up.
Princess sat there for a while, letting the sobs take her. Students and faculty walked by her, watching, but no one intervened. She didn’t scream or throw things. She just cried. Hard and slow. Until the tears made her nauseous.
She stood up, dizzy, and ran into the student bathroom. The moment her shoes reached the toilet, she dropped to her knees and vomited.
Afterward, she sat on the cool floor with the door wide open, hoodie lifted halfway up as she stared at her reflection in the baseboard mirror. Her belly curved gently above the waistband of her leggings.
She wiped her face and whispered, “You deserve better.”
She remained seated on the floor and pulled her Creative Writing book from her backpack and rested it on her lap, where it barely balanced.
She stared at the cover through glassy eyes.
Maybe I can’t change the past,she thought.
But she could write the hell out of what came next. She had to. Now that she was writing for two.
The Sound of Goodbye
A few dayshad passed since the blowup on set. Zay was back in Los Angeles, alone in the studio, surrounded by empty water bottles and dim purple LED lights that hummed above the console. His head was low, and the headphones were pulled halfway down as he looped the same eight bars over and over again.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Love, Princess.
That argument hadn’t just rattled the room. It cracked something in him. The things she said echoed louder now that he was back in his own space with no distractions to hide behind. Why was she still that angry? That hurt? If she had really movedon, why did it sound like she was still bleeding every time she said his name?
Unless . . .The thought suddenly came to him.
Unless she wasn’t just hurt. Maybe she was hiding something. Maybe her pain wasn’t just about what he did; it was about what they never got to say. Or fix. Or admit.
Truth be told, he was hurting too.
He missed her. Not in a weak, regret-filled way. But in that deep, buried, unfinished kind of way. He began to realize that maybe he never really let go either.
Still, . . . she’s married now. That must mean something. Right?
Zay exhaled and shook his head. It was late, maybe two or three in the morning; he didn’t keep track when he was in the studio. The world outside had quieted down, but his mind hadn’t. He turned up the song he’d just recorded. It was soft but full, warm but layered with a melancholy he hadn’t even meant to create. It was the same melody he’d been playing around with since he was seventeen. A song he started writing in jail as a boy with no lived experiences. It hit harder now.
Now, more than a decade later, he was finally finishing it.
“Damn.” Kam’s voice cut through the beat like a thunderclap.
