I can still hear her saying it, her voice steady and breaking all at once.I can’t do this to them.
The guilt twists deep. She’s right. It is my world, my noise, my face on a screen, my words in the mouth of a stranger who showed up with a knife. And she’s the one bleeding from it. Dominik. Just like Emily bled for it, too, in her own way. Not me or the fans. It isn’t fair, to her, to him, to anyone who’s ever just tried to love me without signing up for the aftermath.
The sound of her mug setting down on the counter pulls me back. I look up, and she’s standing there, still, beautiful in that quiet way she never means to be. She looks like she’s already halfway gone, and that terrifies me more than any headline ever could.
“Kas,” I start, but she just shakes her head, not angry, just sad.
“Please,” she whispers. “Don’t make it harder.”
I can’t move. If I do, I’ll grab her. If I grab her, I’ll beg, plead, cry. So I sit there, jaw clenched, heart splitting open as she walks past me,down the hall, into the bedroom. The door clicks shut. The house goes still again.
I stare at the faint reflection of myself in the rain-fogged window, hoodie still on from the flight, eyes blood shot, the picture of someone who’s lost a piece of himself and doesn’t know how to stop bleeding from it.
My phone buzzes on the table. Messages, Kiri, Ronan, management, the label. Noise. I swipe them away. I stand and walk to the closed door of her room. My hand hovers on the handle. Just a breath away from undoing everything she’s trying to protect. I let it fall.
“I’m not giving up on us, Kasia. Not like this.” A pause, a breath whispered into the grain of the door that feels like a vow.
“I love you. I’ll wait.”
The text comes mid-flight, the buzz against my thigh pulling me out of the half-sleep I’d fallen into somewhere over Nevada.
Dominik woke up.
Relief hits so hard I almost exhale aloud. My hand’s still trembling when the next one lands.
Don’t wait, Rafe. I loveyou, but don’t wait.
For a second, the plane feels like it drops ten thousand feet. I stare at the words until they blur. My pulse is in my teeth. I want to throw the phone, into the wall or through the aisle, out a window. I picture the glass shattering, the air rushing out, the pressure dropping until I’m just gone with it. No noise or headlines. No more sickening ache in my gut that won’t stop.
I don’t move. I grip the phone until my knuckles go white. She’s in shock, I tell myself. She just needs time, she doesn’t mean it. The lie feels like breathing through glass shards caught in my lungs. Maybe we were never meant to be. Maybe I’m just the disaster that keeps proving himself right. But every part of me rebels against it. The moment she said she couldn’t do this anymore, that’s when I knew. That’s when the clarity came.She’s the one, even now, even in this. Maybe certainty is the only thing I have left to hold onto but I’ve never been more sure of anything.
When the plane lands, I don’t remember the last hour of it. I walk straight through the terminal, past the pickup signs, sunglasses on, head down. The others are waiting in the lobby when I get back to the hotel. Kiri leaning on the counter, Rithy texting, Ronan with his arms folded, he must have told them about the message I sent, that I was coming back. That Kasia had ended things. Now they’re watching me like hawks, waiting to make sure I don’t fall apart.
“Dinner’s in ten,” Ronan says when he sees me.
“Not hungry.”
“Rafe, you need to eat something—”
“Not.Hungry.” I snap, my voice cracking halfway through. I head for the elevators.
Rithy steps forward. “Maybebeing aloneisn’t the best call right now.”
I press the button anyway, jaw tight. “I don’t know what’sbestright now. But I can’t—” My throat closes up. The rest comes out a whisper. “I can’t do this. Just give me one fucking night to get my shit together.”
The doors close on their faces, all of them staring, helpless.
The room’s too still. Every little sound, the hushed whisper of the air unit, the tick of the vent, the traffic below, stretches until it’s unbearable. My chest feels like it’s full of static.
Then it breaks.
The first thing to go is the TV. Then the remote, the lamp, the phone, glass, plastic, the thud of impact against drywall. I don’t remember choosing to move. Just the crash, the sound of something splitting. The mirror’s next, my reflection fracturing into a dozen versions of me I can’t stand to look at.
When I finally stop, the room looks like the inside of my head, shattered, bleeding, beyond repair. I’m sitting on the floor when I hear pounding. They must have been hovering, hoping I'd change my mind.
“Rafe! Open the door!” Kiri's trying to not be too loud to avoid attention, I can tell.
“Let us the fuck in!” Ronan doesn't care either way.
