Then keep walking.
I reread it twice. Not because I need the reassurance, but because it is the first thing in my life that has asked absolutely nothing of me. That is what finally breaks me.
I press the heel of my hand into my sternum and laugh quietly, my breath hitching in a way that slides too close to a sob. Everything in me wants to do something. I want to pack a bag, run into the night, provoke him into another fight, apologise for the wreckage, or explain the unexplainable.
I don’t. I sit. I let the urge burn itself out.
I recognise that impulse now. It’s the reflex to make myself legible to someone else so they don’t have the power to decide who I am for me. I don’t need to be legible tonight. I don’t need to be read.
A sound from down the hall makes me freeze. Footsteps. Slow. Measured. Weighted.
I don’t move. I don’t even breathe.
The doorframe fills. Damien stands there, his silhouette jagged against the hallway light. He isn’t blocking the exit this time. He isn’t charging into the room to reclaim the space. He is just standing there like a man who has lost his map and realised he’s in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. His face looks older, stripped of the certainty that used to be his primary feature.
We stare at each other. The silence is a physical thing between us. I realise then that whatever cage existed wasn’t built of locks or walls. It was built of the silences we both agreed never to examine.
“I meant what I said,” he finally murmurs. His voice is a ghost of the roar it was an hour ago.
“I know,” I reply.
That’s all I give him. Not forgiveness. Not a promise to stay. Not even a reassurance that I don’t hate him. Just acknowledgment.
He swallows hard, his throat working. “I don’t know how to be… different.”
“I do,” I say softly.
The words aren’t meant to be cruel. They aren’t meant to be kind. They are simply the truth. I have spent my entire life being different versions of myself to satisfy the requirements of the rooms I was in.
Something in his expression crumples, a momentary lapse in the mask. He nods once, a sharp, brittle movement, then turns away without another word. His footsteps retreat down the hall, heavier this time, as if gravity has finally noticed him and decided to exert its full force.
The door at the end of the corridor closes. Not slammed. Just closed.
I exhale, a long, shaky breath. My phone buzzes again. Not a message this time. A call. An unknown number. I let it ring. Once. Twice. Three times.
It stops.
I don’t feel relief. I feel… space. Vast, echoing space.
I lie back on the rumpled bed and stare at the ceiling, watching the shadows of passing cars shift across the white plaster. My thoughts don’t race anymore. They drift. That scares me more than the panic ever did, because drifting means I am no longer anchored to anyone else’s fear.
I think about the girl in the chair. The boy who taught me stillness. The man who mistook recognition for ownership. The other man who never asked me to choose.
For the first time, none of them feel like gravity. They are just history.
I close my eyes. I am not trying to disappear this time. I am simply resting. And somewhere deep inside, a thought settles into place with a terrifying, beautiful clarity:
I don’t need to be rescued. I don’t need to be claimed. I don’t even need to be understood.
I just need to keep walking. And this time, I know exactly whose footsteps I’m listening to.
Mine.
Chapter 47
DAMIEN
Isit in the car with the engine off and my hands on the wheel as if I’m still pretending I know where I’m going.
