Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
RONAN
I don’t remember getting into my car after she drives away. I don’t remember turning the key, or pulling out of the parking lot. My hands move through the motions—shift, brake, accelerate—while my mind replays her words.
I wanted you to let me in.
I wanted you to trust that I was strong enough.
I wanted you to believe that loving you wasn’t a mistake.
The taste of her lips is still on my tongue, mixing with the copper tang of blood from the cut. My mouth burns with it. The memory of her body against mine sears through my skin, a fever I can’t shake.
I drive without direction or purpose, until the old factory appears ahead of me.
A monument to everything I was … everything I lost …
everything I threw away. The hollow skeleton of brick and steel where I almost died stands exactly as I remember it, a gravestone marking the death of who I used to be.
I shouldn’t be here.
But I park the car and get out anyway, my feet carrying me forward, drawn by a pull I can’t deny. The door groans when I push it open, rusted hinges resisting the movement, louder than it was seven years ago when this place was my only shelter. My only home. A silent witness to what I was becoming.
Inside, shadows stretch across the crumbling concrete, every corner holds memories I’ve spent years trying to forget. The air hits me first, thick and stale, tasting of dust and decay. The temperature drops immediately, colder than it is outside.
My body knows this place. Remembers it in ways my mind has tried to erase. My shoulders hunch automatically against the cold. My breathing turns shallow. My fingers twitch, phantom pains ghosting through nerves that haven’t forgotten.
Broken glass crunches under my boots. Graffiti covers walls that used to be bare—tags and profanity that wasn’t here before. But the layout hasn’t changed, and the shadows still fall in the same patterns.
How many nights did I spend here, shivering under stolen blankets, and counting breaths until morning?
Up ahead, the old office awaits. My entire world for a while. Sunlight filters through the broken windows, painting patterns across the floor. The same patterns I used to trace with shaking fingers while pain and hunger clawed through my veins.
The memories come faster with each step, rushing over me in waves that knock me off-balance.
The first time Lily found me here, burning up with fever, my body betraying every secret I tried to keep. Her cool hands against my forehead. The worry in her eyes. The way she forced Tylenol between my lips, whispering words of comfort.
My hands shaking as I wrote poetry across her skin, trying to tell her everything I didn’t dare say out loud. All the things I felt, but was too scared to tell her.
Her body, warm and willing beneath mine that first time, when she gave me something I did not deserve. The taste of her skin. The sounds she made when I touched her. The way she looked at me afterward, like I’d just given her the world when, in reality, it was the other way around.
I stop at the threshold of the office space. Cigarette butts and broken glass litter the floor now. Empty bottles. Fast food wrappers. Signs of others who have passed through, seeking shelter in this house of memories.
My fingers brush the wall where I used to lean, reading by moonlight until Lily brought me a solar-powered lantern.
It’s just as cold as I remember, and rough against my palm.
Each breath I release sends clouds of vapor into the air.
Visible proof that I’m still breathing, still haunted by ghosts that won’t let me go.
The phantom taste of blood fills my mouth. The bitter burn of pills is a memory on my tongue. It all rushes back, so vivid I can almost feel it happening again.
My box should be here. Hidden in the gap behind the loose brick, wrapped in plastic to keep it safe. My journals. My books. Every word I wrote about her. Every piece of myself I couldn’t take with me.
I cross to the wall, fingers finding the familiar crack. My heart hammers as I work it out of place, but when I reach inside, my fingers find nothing but empty space.
No.
My stomach twists into a knot. That box was the only thing that proved I existed here. I tear at the bricks, scraping skin off my fingers, breaking nails.
It has to be here. Everything I wrote and felt.
Every fucking piece of my soul I left behind.
Poetry scratched in margins, notes I never gave her.
The copy of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ she bought me, its pages filled with my thoughts.
Evidence that I was more than just a junkie dying in an abandoned building.
But the space is empty. There’s dust and spider webs, but nothing else.
A sound rips from my throat, painful and feral.
“Fuck.” The word comes out broken. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
I stare into the empty space, willing the box to materialize, but it’s gone. Really gone. Someone must have found it, took it or threw it away. Or maybe the plastic failed and everything inside turned to pulp and mold.
It doesn’t matter how. It’s gone.
I sink to the floor, hands pressing against the ground. The broken shards of glass bite into my palm, but I don’t care.
The tattered remains of blankets still lie in one corner.
They catch my eye, and my heart squeezes when I recognize one as hers.
A soft blue fleece she left the night she found me sick.
I crawl toward the pile, fingers sinking into the rotting fabric.
It falls apart in my hands, disintegrating into nothing.
Just like everything else in my life.
I sit back against the wall, in the exact spot I used to sleep, where I used to wait for her, while more memories surge up, threatening to drown me.
The hunger that never went away, gnawing at my insides until food became a distant dream. Stomach cramping. Hands shaking. The way I’d press my palm against my ribs, counting each one.
The cold that settled so deep, nothing could touch it. Shivering so hard my teeth rattled. Fingers and toes going numb. The desperate search for warmth.
The shame that burned hotter than fever when she brought me food. When she touched me with gentle hands.
The way withdrawal felt. Nausea that wouldn’t stop. Fever and chills warring for control. Demons dancing behind my eyes while my body tore itself apart.
The sounds she made when I kissed her for the first time.
My chest heaves with breaths that won’t quite fill my lungs. I don’t know why I came here. What did I think I’d find? Closure? Answers? Some kind of proof that I’ve changed?
But I haven’t. I’m still running. I’m still too damaged to be anything anyone needs.
The box being gone feels like a sign. The universe erasing all the evidence, and telling me that the version of myself, the one who loved her desperately, never really existed.
I should get out of here, go back to Edwards’ house, lock myself inside, and stay away from her like she asked. But I can’t make myself move.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Minutes? Hours maybe?
I think about the note I left in her pocket.
Some stories don’t get happy endings, Phare. Some people aren’t meant to be saved. Don’t waste your light trying to guide this shipwreck home.
The words are burned into my mind. I meant every word when I wrote them. I still do.
So why did I come back? Why did I agree to take the house and inheritance? Why did I kiss her in that alley, in the parking lot, when I knew it would only make everything worse?
I know the answer to that. Because I’m selfish. Because even knowing I’ll destroy her, I can’t stay away from her. Because some part of me, the part that wrote poetry in margins and dreamed of a future I’d never have, still believes she can save me.
But she can’t. No one can.
At some point in my spiraling, a sound intrudes. The sound of a car door slamming.
My body tenses, every muscle locking up. Footsteps echo along the hallway.
I know those footsteps. I know her in ways time and distance haven’t erased.
She appears in the doorway, and stops there like a ghost. A memory.
But she’s not a hallucination. She’s real and she’s here.
Her eyes find me on the floor, surrounded by broken glass and rotting fabric, blood on my hands. For a moment, I see myself reflected in her eyes. Not the man I’ve become, but the boy I was.
“What do you mean you were dying?”