I told himI loved him, bare and vulnerable and breathless, and he didn’t say it back—not because he didn’t know what to say. Not because he was overwhelmed.
Because heneverintended for me to get that close.
Because hechose mebased on this.
My legs fold beneath me, and I sit on the floor, the blanket pooling in my lap. I’m still holding his phone, the screen bright and brutal in my hand.
The last line is the one that seals it:
Will say yes for the right price.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but the words are burned into my brain now.
The ache in my chest is sharp and deep. Like grief. Like betrayal. Like shame.
Of course he didn’t want to complicate things. Of course he pulled away the moment I said I loved him. I wasn’t supposed tofeelanything.
I wasn’t supposed to matter.
This whole time, I’ve been trying to prove I’m not just some shy, background girl. That Icantake up space. That Ideservemore.
And now I’m staring at a list that makes it clear—he never wanted that from me.
I press the side button on his phone and let the screen go dark.
It’s ridiculous how something so small—a note in his phone, eight tidy little bullet points—can rip the ground out from under me. But it does. It has. And I can’t sit here any longer, half-naked in his living room, blanketed in shame and silence while he pretends none of this matters.
I need to go.
No more conversation. No confrontation. No desperate demand for answers or some sad attempt to make him say something he clearly won’t.
I just… need to leave with the pieces of myself I still have left.
I stand slowly, clutching the blanket tighter around me like it might hold me together, and drift toward my bedroom—moving through the hallway like a ghost, numb and hollow.
My bedroom smells like him—spice and cedar and some elusive note I’ve come to associate with safety. It’s awful how comforting it still feels.
How badly I wanted to belong here.
My hedgehog-shaped pillow is tucked at the head of the bed, right next to where he slept last night, like it was part of the scene too.
I look at Bernard and nearly lose it.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself, like I’m my own lifeline. “You can do this. Just get your things. One step at a time.”
I grab my suitcase from the corner of the closet and unzip it with shaking hands. The noise is too loud in the quiet room, but I welcome the sound. It makes me feel solid.
Mechanical.
I start with clothes. My jeans, my T-shirts, my dresses.
Next come my shoes. My sensible flats. The sandals I wore in Mexico. My slippers that look like little foxes, which Ash teased me.
I shove them in the bottom of the suitcase and zip it partway closed.
Then I turn to the other half of the closet.
My fuzzy blanket is still folded neatly on the armchair, right where I put it the day I arrived. I pull it down, and the scent of lavender dryer sheets hits me like a memory I didn’t ask for. I hug it to my chest for a second too long before rolling it tight and wedging it into the second suitcase.
