And the dreams…Christ, the dreams won't stop.
They bleed through whatever scraps of sleep I manage to claw together, vivid and relentless. Her face. Her voice. Her hands on my skin like she's trying to reach through time itself and drag me back to when we made sense. She's in my head whether I want her there or not.
Writing it down felt pathetic at first. Like admitting she still has a hold on me after all these years. Like carving evidence of my own weakness into something permanent.
But the alternative is letting this fester until it consumes what's left of my sanity.
So maybe releasing some of it will buy me a few hours of actual rest.
I don't believe that, but I reach for the notebook anyway.
She said once that if she ever had a kid, she'd steal my middle name. Hale. She laughed when she said it, like it was a joke. Like it didn't mean anything. But I remember the way her voice softened when she said it. The way her fingers traced over my heart one night, repeating my name like she was memorizing something she knew she'd lose.
Did she name him Hale?
My son is out there right now. Living a life I know nothing about. Learning to tie his shoelaces, maybe. Memorizing which floorboards creak. Figuring out that real monsters don't have fangsor claws—they wear nice suits and sit at the head of the dinner table.
Is he scared of Calder?
Does he call him Dad?
Does he make himself small so he won't get noticed? Press himself against walls and hold his breath until the danger passes?
Does she?
The notebook's spine cracks under my grip.
The thought of that man breathing the same air as my son, existing in the same space as them, makes something primal rear up inside me. The kind of rage that only destroys.
I want to tear this room apart. Rip the walls down with my bare hands until there's nothing left but rubble and dust and the echo of my own screaming.
But I can't.
So I write instead.
My pen hovers over the page. The words don't want to come. They want to stay buried where they've been rotting for years.
I drag them out anyway.
She took something from me I didn't even know I had. She used it. Hurt me with it. And if I had stayed, I would have forgiven her for all of it. That's why I left.
Because I couldn't afford to forgive someone who could cut that deep.
The truth I never said aloud. Not to her. Not to myself.
She lied to me. Set me up. And when the proof landed in my hands like a live grenade, I didn't ask why. I didn't give her a chance to explain.
I just turned and walked away.
Told myself it was self-preservation. That she chose her side and I waschoosing mine.
But the real reason I left was because staying meant forgiving her.
And forgiving her meant admitting she had that much power over me.
That she could carve me open, leave me bleeding on the floor, and I'd still crawl back to her on my hands and knees.
So I disappeared.
