I didn’t look up.
I couldn’t.
Because if I looked at her, I might stay.
And staying suddenly felt like volunteering to be broken by a girl who still couldn’t say whether I was real to her when it counted.
Chapter Eighteen
ISA
I knewsomething was wrong the second I reached the bedroom.
Not because Drew yelled or slammed something.
Because he was quiet.
Drew Travers was a lot of things. Loud when he wanted to be. Cocky when he didn’t know what else to be. Physical in every emotion, every room, every silence. Even when he was still, he took up space like his body had its own weather system.
But this quiet was different.
This quiet had weight.
I stood in the doorway with my coffee cooling in one hand and my heart climbing slowly into my throat.
His suitcase was open on the bed.
Half-packed.
Hoodies folded with that obsessive precision of his. Shoes lined up beside the bag. Toiletry case zipped. Charger coiled. Everything neat. Everything controlled.
And Drew sat on the edge of the mattress, elbows on his knees, a wrapped box clutched between both hands.
Small.
Silver paper.
White ribbon.
My name written on the tag in his blocky, too-careful handwriting.
He didn’t look up.
“Drew?”
Nothing.
The house behind me kept moving. Somewhere downstairs, my mother laughed too brightly. A cabinet closed. Christmas music played low through the speakers because my mother believed expensive homes should have soundtracks.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
His jaw moved once.
“I’m leaving.”
The words hit so cleanly I almost didn’t understand them.
I stepped inside. “What? Why?”
