His door is half-open, light spilling out. I can hear his voice, soft and tired, talking to someone on the phone.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I’ll be there. I just have to say goodbye first.”
Goodbye.
My breath catches.
I freeze outside his door, my fingers hovering just inches from the handle.
I’m about to turn and run when his eyes lock on mine
“Tilly?”
His voice is soft, almost surprised.
Everything in me wants to bolt, pretend I don’t care, pretend my heart isn’t on fire.
But instead, I look at him.
And the words are right there, sitting on my tongue.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
Don’t go.
But nothing comes out.
I just stand there — caught between everything I want to say and everything I’m too scared to.
And then, before I can find my voice, he says, “There’s something I need to tell you.”
He looks at me for a long time before speaking. So long that I almost forgot how to breathe.
Then, finally, in a voice barely above a whisper, he says it.
“I wasn’t going to go, you know.”
My heart drops straight to the floor.
If a heart is a liquid, there’s no getting it back.
If my heart is made of glass, the million pieces crash so loud I feel my ears bleed.
I hear everything and nothing at once, as a bomb erupted inside my head.
The shattered pieces cut my skin, and everything becomes itchy.
I look at him, and it feels like gasoline is being poured on each cut.
He doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t even look sad—just tired.
The kind of tired that doesn’t come from lack of sleep.
“I told myself,” he continues, his gaze flicking to the floor, “if you give me a reason to stay, I will. But you didn’t.”
My world collapses. The axis on which it was spinning snaps.
