If this is.
“You shouldn’t have to work so hard to do that, Benji. None of this should be so hard,” she says and walks away.
And I know—I fucking know—I’m going to prove myself to her.
If it takes all I’ve got—I’ll give it.
Because she deserves that.
She deserves everything.
Chapter 21-Esme
I knew it wouldn’t last.
That little bubble we’d been floating in?
Yeah.
I knew it was fragile.
Too bright.
Too perfect.
Too us.
But I didn’t think it would shatter like that.
Not with one sentence.
Not with one cold, clinical truth that stripped everything we’d been clinging to down to nothing.
Never married.
The words don’t just echo—they linger.
Like smoke in my lungs.
Like something toxic I can’t quite breathe out.
I press my forehead against the cool glass of the truck window, watching the world smear past in long, sun-bleached streaks of highway and sky.
The land out here is endless.
Flat in some places, rolling in others, fields stretching so far they blur into the horizon like they’re trying to escape themselves.
It should feel peaceful.
Expansive.
Free.
Instead?
It makes me feel small.
Like I’ve been driving in circles for years and only just realized it.
