I woke up on the floor again. Face pressed to cold tile, cheek sticky with drool and tears and whatever else I'd leaked out of myself last night. The room spun slow circles, like the apartment was trying to shake me off. My mouth tasted like ash and cheap vodka, tongue thick and useless. The bottle—empty—lay on its side a foot away, neck pointing at me like an accusation. Another casualty in the war I was losing against myself.
A knock.
Sharp. Real. Not the whispers. Not the scratching. Not my imagination finally snapping clean in half.
My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I gasped.
Drogo.
It had to be.
I scrambled up—half crawling, half stumbling—hands and knees scraping tile, nails broken and bloody from nights I couldn't remember. The room tilted violently. I caught myself on the wall, left a smear of something dark on the paint. Blood, maybe. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting to that door.
Another knock. Impatient.
"I'm coming!" My voice cracked, raw from screaming at shadows for days. Or weeks. However long it had been.
I lurched to the door. Fumbled the chain with shaking fingers. The deadbolt. My hands shook so bad I couldn't grip the knob right, kept slipping, metal cold and unforgiving under my palm.
Please be him. Please be him with some stupid explanation and his arms and that look that said I was home. That I was safe. That this nightmare was over.
I yanked the door open.
No one.
Just the empty hallway, fluorescent light buzzing overhead like a dying insect.
My knees buckled.
On the floor, right outside the threshold, was a note. Plain white envelope. My name in his handwriting—the same handwriting that used to leave post-its on my coffee maker saying "good morning beautiful" or "left early, love you." The same slanted D he'd been signing since we were kids.
I picked it up with fingers that didn't feel like mine.
Opened it.
One line.
Don't wait for me anymore. Found something better.
- D
The paper slipped from my hand.
I stared at it on the floor. At those seven words that erased seventeen years. Seventeen years of "you're the only person who gets me" and "I'd burn the world for you" and "always, Alena, always." Seventeen years reduced to a single line scrawled in the same handwriting that used to write me love letters when we were teenagers. The same hand that had heldmine through every nightmare, every ghost attack, every moment I thought I'd break.
Found something better.
Better than me.
Then I laughed.
It started small—a hiccup, a choke, something bubbling up from the broken place inside me. Then louder. Maniacal. High-pitched and broken, echoing down the empty hallway like a madwoman finally set free. Tears poured down my face, mixing with snot, mixing with the laugh that wouldn't stop, couldn't stop.
"Fuck!" I screamed through the laughter, pounding my fists on the tile hard enough to leave bruises I'd find later. "Fuck fuck fuck!"
The laugh turned into sobs mid-breath—ugly, wrenching, tearing out of my chest like they were trying to take my heart with them. I don't know how long I stayed there. Minutes. Hours. Time was still a joke. The hallway stayed empty. No neighbors came to check. No one cared. I was alone. Like always.
Eventually the laughter died. The crying slowed to hiccups, then nothing. I sat up slowly, wiping my face with the back of my hand. Looked at the note again. Read it one more time, letting each word sink in like poison.
