Life feels wrong without you.
I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.
But every version sounded impossible—too personal, too raw, too much like the truth.
She sat there, staring at the small, glowing screen until the letters blurred. Around her, the cafeteria hummed with the soft, mechanical buzz of vending machines. The night staff filtered through—nurses grabbing coffee, a janitor whistling a carol under his breath.
The world was moving on. She was supposed to move with it.
Instead, she was stuck in the quiet between heartbeats, haunted by snowlight and a voice saying,You don’t always have to hold it together.
Her fingers moved almost without permission, typing:
I haven’t stopped thinking about you.
She stared at the words. They pulsed on the screen, small and damning and perfect.
Then she deleted them.
She replaced them with something safer:
Glad the lodge is warm again. Stay well, Soren.
She read it back, jaw tight, then deleted that too.
The cursor blinked, waiting.
But she couldn’t do it.
Because sending a message would mean admitting that what happened up there mattered—that shematteredto someone outside the world she’d built. And if she let herself believe that, even for a second, everything here—the control, the structure, the perfection—would fall apart.
She locked her phone and slid it back into her coat pocket.
Her reflection in the dark cafeteria window looked pale, almost unfamiliar. Behind it, the city lights blurred into streaks of gold and red, a world that kept spinning no matter who stayed or left.
Somewhere beyond that horizon, a mountain slept under snow.
Nia swallowed hard, pressing her fingers against the bridge of her nose. “Enough,” she whispered. “You’re tired, that’s all.”
She rose, dumped the untouched sandwich, and left the cafeteria. Her footsteps echoed down the corridor, steady and sure, the same as always.
But she couldn’t stop hearing Soren’s voice in her head, quiet and certain:
You make it harder to leave.
When she stepped outside, the cold hit her instantly, sharp enough to sting. The air smelled faintly of pine from the hospital’s decorated wreaths. Above her, the sky was clear—bright, glittering stars over a city that didn’t believe in silence.
She stood there for a long time, breath fogging in the air, until the chill finally forced her back inside.
In her office, she sat at her desk, staring at the blank computer screen. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but she didn’t type. She couldn’t.
It was almost Christmas.
She had everything she’d ever worked for—success, respect, control.
And she had never felt so completely, utterly alone.
12
