I walked to my dresser and pulled on a clean shirt. My hands were steady, which felt insane because nothing inside me was. I grabbed my socks from the floor, shoved my feet into my slides, then picked up her jacket from the chair near my desk.
I held it out, and she stared at it like she didn’t understand what it was.
“Aura.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, and for the first time all night, I saw something real there. It might not have been enough to save us, but it was real.
Fear, shock, and the beginning of recognition arriving too late flickered across her face before she could shove it back behind that sharp, untouchable mask.
“I love you,” I said.
Her face went completely still, like the words had hit something vital and frozen every part of her before she could decide whether to fight, run, or pretend she hadn’t heard me.
The words weren’t planned. They weren’t strategic or fair, probably. But they were true, and I was done letting the truth rot inside me because she refused to look at it.
“I love you,” I repeated, quieter this time. “And I know that makes this worse. I know you’re probably going to take it and turn it into something ugly in your head because that’s what you do when things matter. I’m not saying it so you’ll say it back.”
Her eyes shone suddenly, but she blinked hard before the tears could become anything I had permission to see.
“I’m saying it because I need you to understand what you’re throwing away.”
She didn’t move, even when I set her jacket on the bed.
“If you want me—not this, not the sex, not the secret, not whatever little pocket of control you think this gives you—but me, Aura, then you need to say it before I walk away from this.”
My voice caught, and I hated it.
I hated that even now, standing in the wreckage of us, there was enough of me left to make one last offering. I pressed my hand hard against the center of my chest and waited.
Her lips parted, and for one stupid, brutal second, I let myself believe something might come out.
I didn’t need her to say the same words. I wasn’t that naive. I didn’t need her to hand me love wrapped up pretty and clean when nothing between us had ever been pretty or clean.
I needed something honest. Something real. Something that proved I hadn’t spent almost a year loving a girl who only wanted me when the lights were low and no one could hold her accountable for the way she looked at me.
Nothing came.
I waited anyway because apparently, there was still one pathetic piece of me willing to stand there and bleed for a maybe. Five seconds became ten, long enough for my heart to beat so hard I felt it in my throat and for her silence to fill every corner of the room until there was no space left for hope.
Then she lifted her chin.
“You’ll be back. You get in your feels and throw a fit, but you come back, East.”
The words landed soft and certain and cruel in a way I didn’t think she even meant.
Meaning it would require admitting she understood what she was doing. It would require looking at me and seeing a man instead of a habit. A body. Her secret. Something she could put down and pick back up whenever the ache got too deep.
I looked at her then. Really looked at her.
At the girl standing in my shirt with her scratches on my skin and my name still shaking in her voice. The girl I had loved in pieces for almost a year while she called it fun and I called it everything.
I wanted to believe I saw it register, that she knew she had pushed too far and I was tired of her shit. That I wasn’t another guy waiting around for whatever version of herself she decided to give me when loneliness finally cornered her.
I wanted to believe the fear in her eyes meant she finally understood, but I couldn’t build one more thing on what I wanted to believe.
Not with her. Not anymore.
I stepped back. “No,” I said. “I won’t.”
