“I’m speaking,” I murmur, my voice breaking. “You’re listening.”
His jaw tightens, but he stays quiet.
“I’m proud of you for going to therapy,” I continue, voice trembling but steady enough.
“And you should keep going. But not for me. Not for us. For you. Because if you’re only doing it to win me back, then nothing will change. You need to heal for yourself. Because you are worth fighting for, Chase. You are worth loving. Even if it’s not me who does it anymore.”
He swallows, and the quiet after that feels like a held breath.
“So this is it,” he says finally, voice small. “This is really done?”
“It is,” I answer. “It’s not one fight or one problem. It’s every time I picked myself up after you broke me and then smiled so you wouldn’t feel worse. It’s every time I swallowed my anger because your shame made you louder. It’s the years of being the one who fixed, smoothed, and absorbed your darkness because you couldn’t sit with what hurt you.”
He looks as if he might argue, but words fail him; they stack behind his eyes like bricks.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” he whispers. “I didn’t know how to be different.”
“Then learn,” I say, sharper than I want, then softer. “Learn for you, not because I asked. I won’t be the reason you stop spiraling. I’m not your safety net.”
His hands are shaking, not from the cold. I can feel the tremor run through him.
“I’m trying. I swear I am. Every week—there are things I say out loud that I never said to anyone. It’s brutal.”
“I know you’re trying,” I admit, and it hurts to say it because trying shouldn’t be the only thing that keeps people together. “But trying is different from changing. Trying can be performative if it’s shaped around getting me back. Change is slow, ugly work. And it has to be for you. No one else.”
Tears slide down his face, silent at first, and then steady. “If I’m worth loving, and if you still love me… why are you ending this?”
“Because I’ve broken too many times for you.” My own tears spill over. I’ve held them back too long. “And I can’t do it anymore. As long as I stay, we’ll keep breaking each other until there’s nothing left.”
He clutches at my hands like a lifeline.
“I don’t want to lose you, Tor. I was scared—scared of failing, scared of being small. My parents—” He stops, the words too heavy for the thin winter air. “They did this to me. I don’t want to be that man. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“My staying won’t make you stop hurting me,” I say. “Your childhood didn’t make you a bad man, Chase. It made you wounded. But I won’t let you keep using me as the place to bleed out. I loved you and I thought love could hold everything. I was wrong.”
He closes his eyes, and the sound he makes is half sob, half apology.
“Tell me what to do. Tell me anything that could fix this. I’ll do it.”
My throat tightens. I want to give him a list—therapy sessions, reading lists, support groups, calls to Trent, consistent check-ins with a sponsor. I want to give him a plan that guarantees success.
But there’s no guarantee. There’s only time and work and a willingness he must find inside himself.
“Start with you,” I say finally. “Keep going to therapy. Do the homework. Go when it’s hard, not just when it’s convenient. Talkto your brother and let him see you try. And stop drinking—really stop. Not for me. Not for your brother. For yourself. Then show up for the small things. People don’t need grand gestures. They need daily proof that you can be a different man.”
He nods, furious and desperate and heartbreakingly sincere. “I will. I swear I will.”
“Then do it for that reason,” I plead, still crying. “Not so you can come back to me. Do it so you can live with yourself without hating the man you see in the mirror.”
He looks at me like that broken boy I fell in love with so many years ago, and he whispers, “I love you.”
“I love you,” I whisper back. “And that’s why I can’t stay.”
His forehead presses against mine, his tears thick in his voice. “I ruined us.”
“It wasn’t only you,” I breathe.
“But it was mostly me.”
