Page 139 of The Ache That Stayed

“Say you feel something. Just enough to know I’m not fucking crazy. I don’t need promises. I don’t need forever.”

His eyes searched mine as his throat worked.

“Just don’t tell me I imagined all of this. I don’t—fuck, I don’t even need more than that.”

My chest hurt. Actually hurt. It hurt so bad that every breath felt like breathing through straw.

“Put me out of this misery.”

He swallowed hard. His eyes closed briefly. As though hope itself had become painful and asking cost him everything.

“Because I can survive you hating me, but I don’t think I’d survive finding out I meant nothing to you.”

A sob broke out of me. His thumb pressed into my wrist like he needed to feel something real. I shook my head.

I could see it now. Not the anger. Not the obsession.

Him.

Vulnerable.

His throat worked hard. And for the first time since I’d known him, I couldn’t hold his gaze.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

And his face changed like I’d just confirmed his worst fear. The words came out small, but they shattered everything.

“Leave.”

“You know I’m not going anywhere.”

“Please,” I said, and this time my voice broke completely.

“Don’t make this harder.”

His eyes closed briefly. And when he opened them again, there was only exhaustion. A quiet sort of devastation.

“How?”

Because you’ll die. Because I’ll watch it happen. Because I won’t survive that.

But I didn’t say it. I couldn’t. Instead—I swallowed. And said the one thing I knew would destroy him.

“If you don’t leave…”

My voice dropped. Barely there.

“You’ll lose me.”

I held his gaze.

“Forever.”

His face drained of colour and emotion, like something inside him had given way. He inhaled sharply through his nose like the words had physically gone through him. Like I’d put a blade between his ribs and twisted.

His grip on my hands loosened slowly, reluctant, as if letting go cost him a piece of himself. He didn’t look away—just stared, eyes glassy, trying to understand how I could stand there and do this.

His hand fell away from mine completely then. The absence hit instantly. Cold. Sharp. Final. He stepped back, just one step. But it felt like a chasm opening between us. Distance I already knew I would never know how to cross. It ripped me apart from the inside out, and I wasn’t sure if that wound would ever heal.