“Yeah,” I breathe. “He would.”
She opens my duffel and nestles it inside like it’s something sacred.
Then she grips both my arms, firm and urgent.
“Promise me you’ll come back.”
I hesitate.
“I can’t?—”
“No.” Her gaze sharpens. “Promise.”
My voice trembles.
But I nod.
And I say it:
“I promise.”
Even if it’s a lie.
Even if it breaks me.
Even if the world I’m walking into has a habit of eating promises alive because she needs to hear it. I need to believe it and maybe — in some fractured corner of me still shaped like him —He needs it too.
The room is quiet.
Too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that soothes.
The kind that rings.
The kind that whispers back.
No humming fridge.
No Lola laughing at her own jokes.
No scent of burnt toast clinging to the curtains.
No trace of that stupid, sacred hoodie I stopped wearing because it smells too much like him—like warmth and danger and all the things I was foolish enough to believe could stay.
Just me and the sterile white of a cot that doesn’t belong to anyone yet. A blank space waiting to be filled with someone’s exhaustion, someone’s sweat, someone’s nightmares.
My duffel’s packed.
My name’s printed on the manifest.
My armour—the emotional kind—is cracked and peeling.
My flight leaves at 0700.
And the only thing I haven’t done yet is cry.
Not really.
