“Easton.” My name, from the threshold. A final, trembling benediction.
I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
I gave a single, stiff nod, a gesture she couldn’t see. “I know.”
The door closed.
Not with a slam. Not with a sound of finality. It closed with a soft, precise click. It was quiet. Considerate. Devastating.
After the tempest—the yelling, the fucking, the weeping, the raw, screaming truth—her exit was a whisper.
It was the cruelest thing she’d ever done and the loudest sound I will ever hear.
And I was alone.
Utterly, completely alone in the dark, with the rain tapping a mocking rhythm against the glass, the scent of her coconut skin clinging to the room like a ghost, and my heart pounding a frantic, trapped-animal beat against my ribs.
I wanted to hate her. I ached to hate her. It would be so much easier. A clean, sharp line. A righteous burn.
But the truth, the awful, inescapable truth that settled in my bones colder than the rain, was that I didn’t hate her at all.
I loved her.
And in that moment, loving her felt infinitely worse than any hate ever could. It was the prison, the sentence, and the life term, all in one.
18
Aura
I sat in my car outside Easton’s apartment with both hands locked around the steering wheel, my Sin Bin referee shirt twisted across my ribs, my shorts crooked on my hips, and my mouth swollen from the kind of goodbye that didn’t feel clean enough to survive.
Rain tapped softly and steadily against the windshield, blurring the parking lot lights until every yellow glow stretched long and warped across the glass. The building behind me looked as tired as I felt, all stained brick, dim stairwell windows, rusted metal stairs, and one flickering security light over the entrance that made the wet pavement flash every few seconds. Somewhere up there, Easton was alone with busted knuckles, bruised ribs, a split mouth, and every truth I had finally handed him too late.
My phone sat in my lap.
Bliss had texted six times since The Sin Bin.
Charm had texted four.
I hadn’t answered any of them.
I told myself I needed space. I told myself silence was healthier than saying something awful and permanent. I told myself a lot of things, apparently, because lying to myself had become my most consistent extracurricular.
The group chat was still pinned at the top of my messages.
Ay. B. Cee.
Three girls who had survived middle school bathroom breakdowns, high school hallways, bad eyeliner, worse boys, my public ruin, Bliss’s attack, Charm’s quietly terrifying familyobligations, and one Hockey House fight that had split us right down the middle.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard for so long the screen dimmed. I tapped it awake and typed before pride could talk me out of needing someone.
Me:I’m sorry. I need you.
Bliss answered so fast it hurt.
Bliss:Where are you?
