The Goodbye Promised in a Song #2
Sami pulled her wrist back just enough to look at him properly. There was no room left for bargaining. “Aram,” she said - his name, spoken like she was sealing it. “This is the plan. This is me choosing departure over staying.”
The door handle turned with a soft click that made Aram’s muscles lock. A voice barked, “Open up.”
Sami’s eyes went wide for a heartbeat. Then she moved. She pressed the envelope into his coat pocket without ceremony, as if she was placing a living thing there that needed warmth. Her fingers brushed his palm, quick and urgent.
“Now,” she whispered.
Aram didn’t think. He grabbed her by the elbow and shoved her toward the narrow passage beside the stairs, the one that smelled of rust and old paint.
Sami slipped through with a practiced twist, coat brushing his cheek.
The phone stayed in her hand, screen dark now, the notifications muted to silence.
For one breath, Aram could only feel the press of her shoulder against his chest, the closeness that had never been safe and still had been everything.
Then the stairwell door yanked open, banging against the wall. Light spilled in - harsh, institutional - and with it the sound of officers’ boots and the clipped rustle of fabric as they fanned out.
Aram backed away from the passage, heart slamming against his ribs like it wanted out. He forced his face into something blank, something compliant. He’d learned how to look harmless while danger decided whether it deserved him.
A man in a plain coat stepped into the stairwell, gaze sweeping over the landing as if Sami was a mistake he could correct. Another officer followed, jaw tight, eyes scanning the edges for movement.
Aram kept still until the first man’s attention snagged on his pocket, the bulge of paper under cloth. The man’s eyes narrowed.
“Who are you with?” the man asked.
Aram’s mouth opened, and for a second he couldn’t find language. The whole point of silence was to keep Sami alive, but his fear had its own language and it was screaming.
He looked at the envelope through his pocket as if he could see it from the outside. He thought of Sami’s fingers around it, the way she’d insisted it was proof she was real. He thought of the river bench and her laugh and the promise they’d tried to build from tenderness.
He forced his voice out, steadying it with sheer will. “With no one,” he said. “I was coming down.”
The officer’s gaze flicked over him, lingering on his coat, on the way his hands were too tense. “You live here?”
Aram nodded once. “I heard noise.”
“Then you heard them leave?” the plain-coat man asked, and the question sounded like an accusation wearing a polite face.
Aram swallowed. He could have lied and maybe it would have worked. He could have told the truth and maybe it would have gotten him beaten. He could do neither without cost.
He chose the cost that kept Sami moving.
“I didn’t see anyone,” he said.
The plain-coat man’s expression tightened, but he didn’t press further. He turned his head slightly, calling to someone on the landing. “Check the side passage.”
Aram’s pulse roared in his ears. He took a step back, then another, keeping his hands open, palms visible. The officers’ attention shifted, and that shift was the only window Sami had.
He fled down the stairs as if he belonged to the building, as if he hadn’t just watched her disappear into a narrow gap that smelled like rust. Each step shook his bones. The air grew wetter, colder, and the sound of the river - distant, persistent - became louder as he moved toward it.
When he reached the street, the sky had that bruised evening color Kavaristan always seemed to wear when it was pretending night would make things gentler. He walked fast but not hurried, the way Sami had taught him once when they’d been too young to believe they could lose everything.
He didn’t look back. He couldn’t afford to see the stairwell door being flung wide.
By the time he found the bench, his lungs were burning.
The willows hung their thin green strands over the water, dripping.
The river smell - mud and algae and cold - hit him like a memory.
He sat without checking if the seat was damp, because his body didn’t care about comfort anymore. His only care was time.
He waited until his fingers cramped around nothing and then he waited longer, because Sami had said keep waiting.
When she finally appeared, she wasn’t running.
She moved like someone trying to look like she belonged to the world that had been trying to throw her out.
Her coat was dusted with street grit. There was a faint smear of dried blood at one knuckle, as if she’d scraped herself on the way through some narrow gap or hard surface.
Her hair looked slightly less obedient than it had earlier, strands caught and untamed by wind.
Aram stood too quickly; the bench creaked beneath him. “Sami - ” His voice broke on the old name before he could catch it. He corrected himself, forcing the new one into his mouth like a steel promise. “Sara.”