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Heat flushes my cheeks.

"Fucking nothing."

The part of my stomach that didn't already start at my feet pulls into a million knots.

"I deserve that," I mutter.

"Yeah," he says with no hesitation. "You kinda do."

Silence settles between us again—thicker and even more uncomfortable than before. And that alone says everything.

Jace and I have never been uneasy with each other.

I pick at a loose thread on my bedspread, tugging gently as it stretches away from the knot still anchoring it to the fabric.

"I didn't call to fight," I admit, my voice low.

Jace inhales slowly. "Then what did you call for?"

The question lands harder than it should. Not because I don't know the answer, but because if I say it out loud… then it becomes real.

These last few weeks I've been pulling away. Not consciously—not at first. Just running from the inevitable. Avoiding the conversation.

Avoiding him.

Because I know now that I can't go to CMU. And that voice in my head has only grown louder, drowning out the one that swore I could.

But how do I admit that to him when I don't even want to believe it myself?

When I can't even begin to justify it?

The silence drags on, and when I don't fill it… Jace does.

"You're not coming here, are you?"

My eyes sink shut as I wrap the dull blue string in my hand around my thumb.

"Lenny…"

I twist my finger once more, pulling the thread even tighter.

"Hello?"

The seconds tick by, and rather than forcing the words out that have sat at the back of my tongue for weeks, I watch through blurry eyes as the tip of my thumb turns from light pink to deep purple.

"Jesus, Lenny," Jace says, his voice sounding about as broken as I feel. "You have to give me someth—"

"I can't."

Jace goes quiet at the exact moment that the words leave me—and the string coiled around my finger snaps away from the blanket.

I leave it there—a tourniquet cutting off the throb behind my nail from the rest of my hand. And just like that, the tightness finally loosens in my chest.

But the release of the tension doesn't dull the ache in my heart.

Silent tears start that there's no sense trying to stop. I've cried more than I can count these past few weeks, but somehow they keep coming.

Because I still don't understand it. I still don't know why I can't force myself to pack a bag and move toward the one person I miss most in this world. The one I crave every second of every day. The one I wish could talk me through exactly what I need to do.