I last twenty minutes.
Have you eaten?
I hope I’ll see you tomorrow. Even if it’s just for a little while.
Don’t stay up too late, baby.
I love you.
She doesn’t respond to any of them.
I check her location. She’s in her dorm. Hasn’t moved. Just like she said.
A sense of vindication unfurls inside me. This is why I do it—why I track her, why I built systems to keep her within reach even when she tries to disappear. Because when she shuts me out, when she walks away with tears in her eyes and doesn’t look back…this is all I have left. This little red dot glowing on a map. A sliver of her that can’t lie to me.
I don’t watch the footage.I could.God knows I want to. But the thought of seeing her, curled up on that narrow dorm bed, looking small and tired and alone—it feels like touching a wound still bleeding. I know what it would do to me. I’d be halfway to campus before the feed even loaded.
So instead, I go to the gym.
I haven’t boxed in weeks. Not since she started staying over every night, not since I found better ways to exhaust myself—with her skin under my mouth, her voice in my ear, her body clinging to mine like I was something worth holding on to.
But tonight I need violence.
I wrap my hands and drive my fists into the bag until my knuckles split. Until the ache in my chest has somewhere else to go. But even then, even after my arms shake and sweat drips into my eyes, it’s not enough. Nothing is.
When I get home, I check her location again.
She’s still in her dorm.
I hover my thumb over the surveillance app.
And then I put the phone down.
This is my penance. I drove her away. I can’t look at her until she lets me. I have to earn the right to see her again.
Because watching her won’t bring her closer.And god, I need her close.
I drag myself into my home gym and run ten miles on the treadmill, punishing my legs until my mind finally gives out.After a cold shower, I collapse into bed and sleep like a man who’s been dragged through every edge of his longing.
Morning comes slowly. Light spills across the duvet in golden slats, warm against my skin, but it does nothing to thaw the chill that’s settled in my chest.
I roll over and reach for my phone—9:14 a.m.
Still no messages. No missed calls. Nothing from her.
A restless edge curls through my spine as I swipe to the tracker.
Everything stills.
She’s no longer in Boston.
The dot is moving—steadily, deliberately—cutting northwest with purpose.
Not a walk around the block.
Not an early morning errand.
She left me.
