Every room felt stripped down to its bones. Too clean. Too quiet. Like a place that had already been abandoned. Like the inside of my chest—hollowed out, useless, still pretending to function.
I had told him I couldn’t love him back without destroying us both. What I hadn’t said—what I couldn’t say—was that leaving felt like choosing which limb to sever. That walking away wasn’t restraint or strength or sacrifice. It was self-mutilation.
Slower.
Quieter.
And somehow worse.
That night, I lay awake staring at a ceiling that felt impossibly far away, listening to the empty spaces breathe around me. I counted the hours by the ache in my body, by the way my thoughts kept circling the same truth until it lost all meaning.
Leaving might save him.
But it was already killing me.
All I had to do now—all I had left—was erase myself before he came home and realized I’d been the one thing holding him together.
CHAPTER 19
ELLIOT
He didn’t look back. He just walked away as if breaking my heart had cost him nothing.
That was the part that broke me. Not his words. Not his cold indifference. The way he walked away like I was nothing after everything we’d shared. After every broken piece of myself I’d given him.
The door closed with a soft, final sound, and something inside my chest tore open so fast it stole the air from my lungs. I was already crying—had been crying—my face wet and aching, my throat raw from trying not to make noise while he spoke to me like distance was mercy.
I lay there staring at the place where he’d been standing, my vision swimming. My heart pounded hard and uneven, like it couldn’t figure out what rhythm it was supposed to keep now that he was gone. Every breath hitched halfway in, caught on something sharp behind my sternum.
I waited for the pain to crest.
It didn’t.
It just kept coming.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time lost its edges. My body curled in on itself without me deciding to move, knees pulledtight to my chest, arms wrapped around my ribs like I could hold myself together if I tried hard enough.
The room hummed. Machines beeped. The world refused to end. Nurses and doctors walked past my door like voyeurs of my suffering.
Tears kept leaking out of me—steady, relentless—soaking into the pillow until it was cold against my cheek. My face felt swollen, my jaw aching from clenching. My chest burned like I’d inhaled smoke.
Guess that was what happened after you’d tried to drown yourself. But in many ways this felt a million times worse than when the cold water had filled my lungs until they screamed for oxygen.
Then some part of me believed he’d rescue me—he did. But now there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that he’d never come to my rescue again. I’d been discarded. Forgotten by the one person who’d promised to stay even when I got ugly.
I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t even when exhaustion claimed every cell in my body. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I just cried until my eyes felt scraped raw and my head throbbed with every pulse of my heart.
A nurse came in sometime during the night. She spoke gently. Used my name like it might anchor me.
I didn’t answer. Didn’t even acknowledge her.
When she touched my arm, something feral ripped through me. I jerked away, breath breaking into a sharp, ugly sound that scraped my throat.
“Please,” she said. “We can give you something to help you rest. It’d been hours and being this distressed won’t help your recovery.”
“No,” I croaked. My voice sounded wrong—hoarse, shredded. “Don’t.”
“Elliot,” she spoke in a soft yet admonishing tone. “I really think you should reconsider.”
