Smart enough to survive.
Not street-smart enough to survive people.
God, if that wasn’t the truest thing about her.
And somehow, it hurt worse knowing that I was one of the people she hadn’t been able to survive from.
She typed something again, slow and deliberate this time, each word a tiny wound she carved into the screen before turning it toward me.
Though I’m not here to forgive you, I don’t want you to drown in guilt. So be here until my arm heals and let’s not see each other again after.
The words didn’t hit all at once.
They came in waves, small, heavy, suffocating waves that didn’t let me breathe. I read it once. Then twice. And the third time, my jaw tightened, my hands curling on my knees.
She was calm when she wrote it. Not angry. Not cold.
Just… done.
She wasn’t here to make me pay for what I did. She was here because she pitied me. Because she didn’t want to see me break under my own guilt.
And after that… nothing.
She didn’t look at me. Just turned the screen back to herself, as if the conversation was over, as if that was the last page she was ever going to write about us.
I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice steady. “You really think I’ll just—” I stopped, bit the inside of my cheek, forced the words down before they could sound pathetic.
She didn’t answer. Didn’t even flinch.
Her cast hand rested on her notes again, trembling a little from the weight of it, and she wrote as if nothing had just happened.
And I just sat there, staring at her, the girl who’d once made every loud, angry thing in me go quiet, telling me in the calmest way possible that I’d already lost her.
Be here until her arm heals.
Then disappear.
I stared at her for a long time.
Be here until my arm heals and let’s not see each other again after.
There was nothing left to argue with, no room to fight it. No justification, no plea that wouldn’t make me look pathetic.
So all I said was—
“Okay.”
It came out quiet. Flat.
Almost as if it didn’t come from me at all.
She blinked, her eyes flicking up for the briefest second before dropping back down to her notes.
That was it. No reaction. No hesitation. Just… acceptance.
I just sat there, staring at the faint tremble in her fingers, at the shadow her hair cast across her cheek.
Okay.
