He crosses the room and sits on the edge of the mattress, his back to me and the bottle dangling between his knees. I watch his shoulders shift, listen to the intentional way he breaks the seal, then holds it out to me.
Still, no words are spoken as I sit up, take the bottle from him, throw back more than is socially acceptable at eight in the morning. The sting is intense on my empty stomach, but for two seconds it gives me a different type of pain to focus on. So I drink some more. Everything is dulled, even the sunlight breaking through the curtains.
“He left me a lollipop,” I manage to say.
Ian remains quiet, elbows settled on his jean-clad thighs.
I look at the ceiling. At the ornate plaster of this apartment he chose and paid for and filled with every comfort except himself. “He make muffins?”
Ian shifts. “Kitchen counter.”
A sound escapes me. Not a laugh. Not a sob. Something that doesn’t have a name—the sound of something you knew was coming hitting you exactly as hard as you knew it would.
“He made me muffins,” I say. “Before he left. He got up and made me muffins, and I slept through it.” My voice doesn’t break. It does something worse—it stays completely level while everything underneath it comes apart. “I slept through him leaving, Ian.”
He looks at me with that same expression. Like I’m the most fragile thing in the world and he’s been trusted with me and he takes that seriously, has always taken it seriously.
“He was right there,” I say, staring blankly in front of me. “He was in the next room, and I was asleep, and he could have—” My throat closes. “He could have woken me up. Even just to say?—”
“I know.”
I lock eyes with him. “Why didn’t he wake me up?”
Ian takes the bottle and swallows a mouthful, wiping his lips afterward. “Because he’s Reth. He said goodbye the only way he could. Waking you up would have made leaving impossible, and leaving was the thing he needed to do. He chose to let you sleep through it so you could have one more hour of not knowing.”
The tears come then. Quietly at first—just wet heat at the edges. Then less quietly. Then not quietly at all. It’s like a crack in a dam wall. It starts as a trickle until the pressure gets too much and it breaks, becomes a force where chances of survival are slim. It turns into something monstrous, unthinkable, then inevitable.
I cry with no dignity, letting the ugly out. The hiccupping whimpers, the choking sobs, the shuddering sucking-in of air.My whole body jerks with it, shoulders convulsing, spine curling in on itself like I can make myself small enough for the pain to miss me.
My palm slams over my mouth, trying to trap it, but it only makes the sounds wetter, more broken.
“I don’t—” My voice fractures, thick with mucus and salt. “I don’t know when he’s coming back.” Another sob claws its way up, so hard it feels like it scrapes my throat raw. “If he’s coming back.”
The words hang there, pathetic and small, and I hate how they sound. How weak. Howtrue. I press the lollipop harder against my chest until the plastic edges bite into my skin, like maybe the pain on the outside can distract from the way my insides are being hollowed out with a rusty spoon.
Because that’s what this is.
Not just missing him.
Not just heartbreak.
It’s the slow, nauseating realization that I might spend the rest of my life waiting for a man who believes loving me means he has to keep destroying himself. That every time the door closes behind him, it might be the last time I ever see the version of Reth who looked at me like I was worth burning the world down for.
And I don’t know if I’m strong enough to survive that kind of forever.
Ian climbs fully onto the bed and pulls me into his arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world—like he’s been waiting years to do exactly this. His back hits the headboard as he settles against the pillows, drawing me across his chest until I’m curledcompletely into him, my face buried in the warm space beneath his collarbone.
One of his legs tangles with mine. His arms lock around me—strong, steady, unrelenting—like he could hold the entire breaking world together if it meant keeping me from falling apart. He holds me the way you hold someone when you’re not trying to fix anything, when you understand that fixing isn’t what’s needed, when all you have to offer is the fact of your presence and you’re offering it completely.
“I became his new leash,” I whisper, the words tasting like poison. “That’s all I am. Just another chain. He’ll keep destroying himself… because of me.”
Ian’s hand stills for half a second on my back, then resumes its slow, soothing path. But I feel the tremor in his fingers. The way his jaw clenches against the top of my head. The way he pulls me impossibly closer, like if he holds me tight enough, he can shield me from the truth I just spoke.
“You’re a reminder for him to keep breathing. To not drown. That’s what you are, Crazy,” he murmurs, voice low and rough, lips brushing my hair.
“Ian.” My voice comes out very small.
“Yeah.”
