Harder than Chloe’s betrayal.
Because this? This ismy fault.
I open my mouth. No words come out. How do you apologize for tearing apart the only person who ever made you believe you could be whole?
She steps back, and I instantly lose my footing. The ground slips out from under me and leaves nothing but sky and regret.
“You taught me something,: she says, and there’s no anger now. No venom. Only the brutal, bleeding truth. “You showed me that loving someone isn’t enough if you’re too broken to hold them right.”
I want to fall to my knees.
I want to take it back.
I want to erase every second of pain I’ve caused her.
But the universe doesn’t hand out do-overs.
Another step back.
Further.
Colder.
Her hand drifts to her wrist?—
the bracelet.
Ouranchor.
I shake my head, desperate, silently begging her not to?—
She crosses the space between us, not like a lover, not like a friend—like someone delivering the final blow.
Rorie presses the bracelet into my palm. My fingers close around it on instinct, feeling the tiny, cruel weight of what I just lost. She meets my eyes one last time, and it’s like she sees everything in me?—
every broken piece,
every selfish choice,
every way I failed her?—
and still somehow manages to look at me like I wasalmostenough.
“I hope you find your north someday,” she whispers, soft as a prayer. “And I hope it feels like home.”
She turns, doesn’t look back.
The bracelet digs into my hand, a brutal reminder of what I’ve done.
I stay there, rooted to the spot like a fucking ghost, watching the only person who ever truly understood me walk away.
And she’s never coming back.
At some point after Rorie left, I made my way to the beach and have been sitting here for hours.
Her room has emptied, the whispers have faded into walls. The bracelet is still in my hand, still heavy with everything I didn’t say.
I run my thumb over the tiny wooden anchor that now feels like a fucking gravestone, staring out over the endless curve of the ocean.
