The look on her face is something I have carried with me every day since.
Shock first. Then devastation so complete it seemed to hollow her out from the inside.
I sobered instantly.
I scrambled away, my hands shaking, my head spinning. I grabbed for clothes, nearly tripping as I pulled them on. I could not look at Ashley. I could not look at anyone.
I threw a sheet over her shoulders without meeting her eyes.
By the time I stumbled into the hallway, Claire was gone.
The door to the apartment hung open, the night air rushing in like judgment.
I stood there for a long moment, frozen, the silence roaring.
Then I went to the bathroom and tried to scrub myself clean.
The disgust did not lift.
I punched the wall once, hard enough to split skin, hard enough to feel something other than the collapse inside my chest.
The pain brought bile up my throat. I leaned over the toilet and vomited, my stomach burning because there was nothing in it but alcohol and shame.
Chapter 66
Ethan
I do not remember how long I sat on the bathroom floor after she was gone. Time had lost its shape. The light hummed overhead. My knuckles throbbed where skin had split, blood smearing faintly against the white porcelain of the sink.
I stared at my hands like they belonged to someone else.
They were the same hands that had held Claire that morning. The same hands that had promised her a future that I had just destroyed.
The shame was a living animal. It pressed down on me until even breathing felt painful.
I washed my face. The water was cold. It did nothing.
I looked at myself in the mirror and did not recognize the man staring back. His eyes were bloodshot. His mouth slack with disgust, shoulders sagging.
This was who everyone had warned her about.
This was who she had loved anyway.
I dressed slowly.
Ashley had already left by the time I came back into the living room. I did not know where she went. I did not want to know.
The food bag sat untouched on the counter. Grease had soaked through the bottom, leaving a dark stain like rot spreading outward.
I threw it away without opening it.
The apartment felt wrong now. Polluted. Every surface carried memory.
I could not stay there another second.
I grabbed a duffel bag and began to pack without thought. Clothes. Shoes. Anything my hands landed on. I was evacuating the crime scene.
My phone buzzed once on the counter.
