Caleb stopped himself. After a moment, he asked, “Can I put him to bed?”
Fighting back tears, I nodded.
Caleb tucked Lucas into bed while I stood in the doorway.
“Hey, buddy,” he said softly. “I might not be around for a little while. If you need anything at all, just call me, okay?”
Lucas looked at him, confused. “Why? Where are you going?”
The innocent question seemed to break something inside Caleb.
“I’m just going to be busy with work, that’s all,” he said gently. “But I’ll always be there if you need me. Anytime.” He paused before adding quietly, “Just take care of your mom, alright?”
Lucas nodded.
Caleb kissed him good night.
He closed the door and walked toward the living room… toward me. He tried once more. “Please. Just listen.”
“There’s nothing left to say.”
He hesitated, searching my face—like someone looking for a door that no longer existed.
Then he left.
I collapsed onto the bathroom floor, sobbing silently so Lucas wouldn’t hear. I had never cried like this—not even when Harper hadshattered me. This pain was deeper because it carried disbelief with it. Because I had trusted Caleb. Loved him. Believed in him.
And he had broken that.
I told myself I had to move on. Quickly.
I had let myself become too dependent. That was my mistake.
The tears came again, quiet and endless, as I sat on the cold tile.
At least there was one thing he could never take from me.
I had never told him I loved him.
39
CALEB
Iwalked out of Nyah’s apartment feeling like something inside me had collapsed.My pulse throbbed painfully in my throat, each beat too loud, too fast, as if my body was trying to outrun what had just happened. My chest felt hollow and heavy at the same time, my heart striking against my ribs with a dull, exhausted force. I stood there for a moment, keys clenched in my hand, staring at the closed door as if it might open again—like she might come back, like this might rewind itself.
How did this happen? How did everything fall apart in seconds?
I replayed the last ten hours again and again, searching for a warning I’d missed, a crack I should have seen forming. I’d gone to bed thinking about her smile, about the way she laughed when she thought no one was watching. Nothing about my life had felt unstable. And yet here I was, standing in the wreckage of something I’d believed was solid.
Nyah’s face burned in my mind—not anger, not hysteria, just that hollow, devastated look. The kind that comes when something confirms a fear you didn’t want to admit you already had.
She had told me once, like it was something she didn’t want to give power to, about Harper. About how she’dknown. How she’d stood outside his door and heard everything. How she’d never confronted him. Never screamed. Never demanded explanations. She’d just… absorbed it. Let it carve something permanent into her. She’d said it matter-of-factly, but I’d seen it then—the way betrayal didn’t make her loud. It made her retreat. It made her decide, alone, and walk away.
God. No wonder she didn’t stay. No wonder she didn’t ask questions.
I had chased her down the hallway in the morning, down the stairs, calling her name, my voice breaking against the walls. By the time I reached the street, she was gone. Vanished. And with her, any sense of control I thought I had.
When I realized she wasn’t coming back, I turned around and went upstairs again.
