Blank.
Week after week of nothing. Just clean white space where her voice used to live. Wheresheused to live. It presses against my chest until I can’t breathe, until the guilt tastes like copper and ash in the back of my throat.
“She stopped writing,” I mutter.
“Yeah.” Ian’s voice is quieter now, but the anger still simmers underneath. “Right when she thought she lost you for good. But those blank pages aren’t empty, Reth. They’re fucking screaming. She’s been carrying this alone while you sit in here drowning in your own guilt, too chickenshit to let her in. I’ve watched her break quietly, day after day, and I’m done watching you make it worse.”
I keep turning them. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Near the back, almost missed—one line. Undated. Ink a little shaky, like it was scratched out fast in the dark.
Monsters deserve love too. I still mean it.
I read it four times. Five. The words blur.
That Halloween night crashes back—pink lollipop, her voice in the dark saying the same impossible thing to a stranger wearing a mask. And here it is again, stubborn as hell, written like a vow even after everything I’ve done.
The crack in my chest widens into something ugly and bleeding.
She still believes it. Even now. Even after I pushed her away, after the withdrawal made me a monster in front of her, after I proved every fear she should have had.
How can you still mean it? After everything I am. After everything I did to you.
Something cracks open in my chest. A slow, ugly seam splitting wide, letting in air that burns like fire in my lungs.
Ian’s already at the door, hand on the frame, shoulders tight.
“I can’t keep carrying this for you,” he says, rough and final, the anger giving way to something heavier—disappointment, exhaustion, love that’s been stretched too thin. “I’ve held her together while you try to find yourself. I’ve watched you shut her out like she’s the one who put you in that cell. Figure your shit out. Or don’t. But you need to know what it’s costing her.”
He leaves.
I sit on the floor with that one line burning in my hands, the compass on my left hand pointing north like it’s been trying to tell me something for months.
The blank pages feel heavier than the blood I’ve spilled. Heavier than the needle marks. Heavier than Mary’s face in that cell. Heavier than the weight of pushing away the only person who ever looked at the monster and still said yes.
Monsters deserve love too.
I still mean it.
I close the diary, pulling a palm down my face.
“Reth?”
When I look up, she’s standing in the doorway, eyes red, hair a mess, every line of her beautiful face filled with a brokenness I’ve never seen on her before.
She comes in and closes the door behind her, and I look at her face, and I know immediately that something's different. Something's happened. The specific quality of her stillness isn't the careful, patient stillness I've watched hermaintain. This is something else. This is a woman who has arrived at a conclusion.
My stomach drops.
She knows.
I can see it, and now we're here, in this room, and whatever I've been dreading since the driveway is about to arrive.
I stand, put the diary on the bed. Face her.
“How?” is all I manage to say.
“Valeria.” One word. One giant crack of destruction.
