We don’t run.
That’s the lie my body tells itself at first—that I’m still running, still being chased, still allowed momentum. But the moment Kai’s hand closes around mine again, I know it isn’t true. This isn’t flight. This is being taken somewhere.
The jungle doesn’t blur anymore. It presses in. Leaves slap wetly against my calves. Stones bite into my feet. Every step lands heavier than the last, my lungs scraping raw air like they’re trying to punish me for still needing it.
“Kai,” I say, and my voice breaks immediately, ugly and hoarse. “Please.”
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t slow.
His grip is firm, unforgiving, like my wrist is an anchor point he’s already bolted into the future. I stumble, nearly go down, and he tightens his hold automatically—no pause, no hesitation. Not to help. To keep me moving.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt, the words spilling before I can think. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
That gets him to stop.
Just for a second.
Not fully. Just enough that my shoulder bumps into his back when he turns, hard, his body blocking the narrow path ahead. The sudden stillness is worse than the running. My heart slams into my ribs like it’s trying to escape without me.
“Sorry for what?” he asks.
His voice is calm. Too calm. It scrapes against my nerves like metal.
I swallow. My throat burns.
“For all of it,” I say. “For leaving. For lying. For—” I choke, breath hitching. “For surviving you.”
Something flashes behind his eyes. Gone too fast to name.
“I wish,” I whisper, the words tumbling out now, frantic, desperate, “I wish we could go back. Four years. Just—before everything went wrong.”
He exhales through his nose, sharp.
“There was no before,” he says.
“There was,” I insist, stepping closer without meaning to. “There was a version of us that didn’t end like this. We were stupid and young and it was messy but—God, Kai, it wasn’t this.”
My chest tightens. Tears spill whether I want them to or not.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I sob. “You didn’t have to come back for me. You could have lived your life. You could have found someone else.”
He laughs then.
It’s short. Bitter. It hurts worse than if he’d shouted.
“Someone else,” he repeats.
“Yes,” I say, nodding quickly, clinging to it. “Someone clean. Someone who wasn’t wrong. Someone you could have been happy with.”
The words taste like knives.
“Someone who didn’t make you bleed,” I whisper. “Someone you didn’t have to destroy yourself over. Not me. Not this fucking life.”
His jaw tightens so hard I hear his teeth grind.
“You think this is about happiness?” he asks quietly.
