He didn’t smile. He didn’t forgive me. But he didn’t turn away either. And that was the beginning—not of absolution—but of something fragile and real enough to hurt.
Elliot had passed out straight after I told him I wasn’t running. I was grateful I had the chance to process everything he’d said to me. He drifted in and out a few times before he eventually woke.
Elliot’s jaw had set. His gaze drifted away from me—not far, just enough to break whatever fragile thread had been holding us in place. His breathing changed, shallow and deliberate, like he was bracing himself for impact that had already happened.
“You don’t get to do that,” he said. The words were quiet.
But they hit harder than shouting ever could.
“Do what?” I asked, already knowing.
“You don’t get to come back,” he said, eyes fixed on the wall now, “and talk like you’re the only one who’s been afraid.”
My chest tightened. I stayed still. “I was terrified,” I said carefully.
“I know,” he snapped, turning back to me at last. His eyes were sharp now. Awake. “You made sure I knew.”
I flinched.
“You think I didn’t wake up every day scared?” he continued. His voice trembled, but he didn’t let it break. “You think I didn’t lie there replaying every moment, trying to figure out where I crossed whatever invisible line made you disappear?”
“That wasn’t?—”
“Don’t,” he said, immediately. Not loud. Final. “Don’t interrupt me.”
I shut my mouth.
His good hand curled into the sheets, knuckles blanching. The monitors picked up the change—his heart rate ticking up, steady but unmistakable. “I didn’t need you to save me,” he said. “I needed you to stay.”
The word cracked through the room.
Stay.
“You talk about fear like it only lived in you,” he went on. “But I was the one waking up in a house that still smelled like you. I was the one checking my phone like an idiot, knowing it wouldn’t light up. I was the one trying to breathe around the fact that the person who promised not to leave decided I was too much to keep.”
My throat burned.
“You blocked me,” he said. “You erased me without giving me the dignity of a conversation. Do you know what that does to someone who’s already lost everyone?”
“I thought—” My voice broke. “I thought space might help you?—”
“Space?” His laugh was sharp, humorless. “You didn’t give me space. You gave me silence. And silence is not neutral. Silence tells someone they’re disposable.”
The words lodged in my chest like shrapnel. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” I said.
“But you did,” he shot back. “And then you left me alone with it.” His breathing hitched now, anger bleeding into something rawer beneath it. “I had to convince myself you never meant any of it,” he whispered. “Because believing you cared and still chose to leave was worse.”
I felt like I was drowning in the space between us.
“You don’t get to be the only one who’s scared,” he said again, softer now. “You don’t get to frame this like your suffering absolves what it did to me.”
He was right. I nodded once. “It doesn’t.”
Silence stretched. Thick. Charged. Then he looked at me—really looked this time—and there was something devastatingly clear in his expression.
“I still love you,” he said. “And that makes me angry.”
My breath caught.
