“Anything.”
“Come back.”
My voice shakes.
“I will.”
But the lie tastes bitter on my tongue.
Because I don’t know if I can keep that promise.
Not anymore.
Not with thirty days left to burn.
And a war inside me that no one else can see.
Lola cries herself quiet on the couch, and I don’t say anything else. I just sit beside her, curled into the corner of myself like if I make my body small enough, maybe the ache hollowing out my ribs will shrink with it.
She finally falls asleep with her cheek pressed to a throw pillow, one hand gripping mine like she’s afraid I’ll vanish if she lets go. And maybe she’s right. Maybe I will.
The flat settles into silence — the kind that feels stretched too thin, the kind that makes every shadow look heavier. The kind you can hear your own heartbeat inside.
But my mind won’t quiet.
It keeps spinning back to him — to that look, that voice, that jaw, that impossible contradiction of want and distance. To the way he made me feel like I was his. To the way he made me feel like I was nothing.
I slip away quietly, to my room, to the stillness, to the part of me that’s been bleeding in silence for years.
And I write.
Not a diary entry.
Not a goodbye.
Not a confession.
Just words.
For me.
For the girl I’ve been trying to outrun.
Dear Me,
If you’re reading this, it means you’re about to do something reckless. Or brave. Or maybe both — because isn’t that what you’ve always been? A little too reckless for your own good, and a little too brave for the world that tried to break you.
You said you’d never fall again. And yet here you are. Torn up over a man with ocean eyes and a mouth made for promises he never intended to keep.
You said you’d never be one of those girls. The ones who ache for someone who hurt them. But your hands stillshake when you remember the way he said your name. Your thighs still clench when you remember the way he looked at you. You still remember what it felt like to kiss someone who made you feel like more than the sum of your broken parts.
But here’s the thing.
He isn’t the story.
You are.
You always were.
