You did your best.
You loved him without asking for anything back.
That doesn’t make you pathetic. It makes you brave.
It’s okay to stop waiting for the version of him that loved you back.
I stared at the words until the ink dried, until I almost believed them. Then I closed the journal and pressed it to my chest like a bandage, or maybe a shield. My eyes burned, but no tears came. Just the ache of trying to make peace with the truth: maybe I’d never get the ending I’d imagined.
The door creaked open. I froze, sliding the journal under my pillow.
Dare stepped inside, the hallway light catching the edge of his jaw before he kicked the door shut. He didn’t look at me, just shrugged off his jacket and peeled off his shirt, muscles shifting under the light.
He yawned like he’d had the best night of his life while I’d been here trying to forget him.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.
“I wasn’t asleep.”
He glanced over, eyes flicking across my face. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. “Means a lot coming from you.”
The ghost of a smirk. Then he climbed into bed, turning away. The air felt heavier with every breath. Every time I tried to let him go, he made a liar out of me just by being here.
I buried my face in the pillow, fighting the urge to say something, anything. I might’ve made it to sleep if not for the quiet sigh he let out—a soft, tired sound that touched something in me. He wasn’t supposed to sound broken too.
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
“Do you even remember the last time you were honest with me?”
His breath caught, followed by silence.
“Because I do,” I whispered. “It was the night in the closet.”
He turned toward me, voice low. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” I said, sitting up, “what’s not fair is how you look me in the eye every day like you didn’t wreck me. What’s not fair is watching you pretend to be someone else while I’ve spent years picking up the pieces you left behind.”
His jaw clenched. Even in the dark, I could see the tension in his silhouette.
“I never asked you to?—”
“No. You just disappeared. And when you came back, all you did was punish me for wanting you.”
He sat up, the streetlight slicing across his face. “I didn’t know how to want you back,” he said finally. “Still don’t.”
Something inside me folded in on itself, crushing inward like a building giving way to its own weight. And maybe it wasn’t a confession. Maybe it was just another excuse. But it’s the closest he’s ever come to telling me the truth. I lie backdown, curling onto my side. Behind me, the mattress shifted. Quiet breathing. A pause as if he was deciding whether or not to speak again.
“I don’t want this life anymore. I’m tired of pretending—about school, my dad, all of it. I don’t even know who I’d be without it. But I think you’d know. Or could help me figure it out.”
It gutted me. Because he was right. Icould.But it wasn’t my job to save him from himself. Amira pointed out that I wasn’t a rehab clinic.
So I whispered, “Okay.”
And just like that, he made a liar of me again.
CHAPTER 26
