The bathroom tilts.
I clutch the sink, breathing shallow, heart battering against bone.
Because now I know the truth.
He didn’t just come into my house tonight.
He didn’t just leave a threat on my nightstand.
He brought back the piece of me I threw away.
The version of him I killed the day I testified.
The past I buried with shaking hands.
And he wants me to look at it.
He wants me to choke on it.
He wants me to remember what I did.
My breath fractures.
“No…” My voice trembles. “No, I can’t?—”
But I’m already folding over the marble, clutching both letters in my hands as silent tears spill again.
Outside the bathroom door, the house hums with the kind of pristine silence that makes everything feel unreal.
But this?
This is real.
Kai was here.
Kai touched this.
Kai opened this.
Kai stood where I’m sitting.
And Kai wants me to remember the version of him I destroyed.
I don’t know how long I sit there—knees pulled to my chest,
letters crushed in my fist, breath trapped in the hollow space beneath my ribs.
Minutes.
Hours.
A lifetime.
The bathroom lights hum faintly above me, too bright, too sharp, turning the marble into a cold spotlight I want to crawl out from under.
I can’t let Noah see these.
I can’t let anyone see these.
