CHAPTER 2
Ciara’s POV:
“If you don't shut your lying, cheating mouth right now, Morgan, I swear to God I will throw every single piece of your raggedy-ass life out this third-story window!”
My voice didn't just ring out; it tore through the cramped hallway of my apartment like a saw blade hitting a knot in old pine. My chest was heaving so hard the cheap gold-plated chain around my neck rattled against my collarbone, a frantic metal-on-skin frantic rhythm that sounded exactly like my racing heart. The air inside my living room felt tight, thick, and instantly sour, completely stripped of the clean linen scent I’d sprayed just that morning.
Instead, it smelled like raw grease from the takeout containers on the counter, stale sweat, and the cheap, sickeningly sweet vanilla body spray that wasn't mine.
It belonged to Tesha.
Tesha, who was currently scrambling into her denim shorts by the edge of my bed, her fingers shaking so badly she couldn’t even get the button through the hole. She was crying—those fake, dry-eyed, breathless little sniffs she always used when she got caught doing something lowdown in high school.
“Ciara, baby, please, it’s not even like that—” Morgan started, stepping toward me with his hands up, palms out, like he was trying to calm down a stray dog instead of the woman who had paid half his car note last month.
He was half-naked, his dark skin glistening with a film of guilty sweat that made my stomach do a slow, violent roll.
“Don't you 'baby' me!” I screamed, the sound tearing up from the deepest, rawest part of my throat. The sophisticated, measured vocabulary I’d been practicing for my college speech courses completely evaporated, replaced by the heavy, unadulterated weight of the Third Ward streets that raised me.
“Don't you dare bring your voice into my crib and try to paint over what my own two eyes just saw! You in my bed. In the sheets my momma bought me for my birthday. With her?”
I pointed a trembling finger at Tesha. The betrayal didn't just hurt; it felt like a physical weight pressing down on my lungs, a cold, heavy block of concrete dropping right into the center of my chest. This was the girl who sat next to me at Sunday dinners.
The girl who held my hair back when I was sick.
“Ciara, I’m sorry, oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Tesha blubbered, finally getting her shoes on, her voice high and whiny.
She wouldn't look me in the eye. She couldn't. The long, synthetic braids she’d just paid eighty dollars for were tangled around her shoulders, a messy reminder of the frantic scramble she’d just made to get out from under my boyfriend.
“Get out,” I said.
My voice dropped from the screaming high register to a low, lethal whisper that carried more weight than any shout.
The silence that followed was absolute, save for the rhythmic, mocking hum of my old refrigerator in the kitchen.
“Both of y’all. If you ain't out of this door by the time I count to three, the police gonna be the least of your worries.”
“Ciara, let’s just talk…” Morgan reached for my arm.
“One.” I didn't flinch. I didn't step back. I looked right through him, my brown eyes hardening into something cold and ancient.
He saw the look. He knew me well enough to know when the sweet, nurturing community girl was gone, replaced by the survival instinct that kept my family alive for generations. He grabbed his shirt off the floor, not even bothering to put it on, and shoved his feet into his unlaced sneakers.
“You trippin',” he muttered under his breath, trying to claw back some piece of his pride as he hustled toward the door. “You always gotta make everything a whole movie.”
“Two,” I barked, stepping aside so they could pass, my body vibrating with an aggressive energy that made the floorboards feel unstable.
Tesha practically flew past me, her head down, her shoulder brushing against the doorframe as she escaped into the carpeted hallway. Morgan followed right behind her, his head down, the door slamming shut behind them with a heavy, final thud that rattled the framed art on my wall.
The moment the latch clicked, the silence hit me like a physical blow.
I stood there in the center of my small, one-bedroom apartment, my hands balled into tight fists, my knuckles white under my brown skin.
The rage that had sustained me for the last five minutes suddenly drained out, leaving nothing but a vast, hollow ache that made my knees feel like water.
I sank down onto the edge of the couch, my face dropping into my open palms. The fabric of my shorts felt rough against my thighs, and the silence of the room was deafening.
This was the wreckage. This was the exact point where the old Ciara was supposed to lie down and let the depression take over.
But as a solitary tear slipped through my fingers and wet the palm of my hand, a cold, hard resolve began to take shape beneath the grief.
I wasn't going under. Not for him. Not for her.
The Present Moment:
“Focus on the breath, Ciara. Just the breath.”
My sneakers crunched heavily over the jagged gray gravel and the decaying, weed-choked wooden ties of the old, abandoned train tracks.
The sound was a steady, grounding rhythm in my ears, a deliberate contrast to the chaotic thoughts that had been bouncing around my skull for the past four weeks.
I had been coming out here to these tracks every single afternoon since the breakup, using the isolation of the overgrown path as a makeshift sanctuary to piece my scattered mind back together.
The air was heavy, thick with the suffocating scent of wild honeysuckle and the rich, damp aroma of the earth after the previous night’s downpour.
It was the kind of heat that clung to you, wrapping around your limbs like a warm, wet blanket, but I didn't care. I wanted the sweat. I wanted the physical exertion to burn out the remaining traces of Morgan’s betrayal from my system.
I stopped near the edge of the path, my breathing ragged as I looked down at a dry, dusty creek bed that ran parallel to the old iron rails.
I bent over, my fingers brushing past the jagged weeds to grip a smooth, flat river stone.
It felt cool and heavy in my palm, a solid piece of reality in a world that had felt incredibly fragile lately.
I weighed it for a moment, feeling the grit of the dirt against my skin, before bringing my arm back and throwing it with a sharp, aggressive flick of my wrist.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
The stone skipped three times across the hard-packed dirt of the creek bed before disappearing entirely into a dense patch of tall grass.
“You done come too far to let some dusty-ass heartbreak keep dragging you down,” I said aloud, my voice sounding small but entirely steady against the vast quiet of the woods.
The Houston edge in my delivery was sharp, a rhythmic reminder of who I was before I let a man make me feel small.
“Nah, Ciara Long. You rising. You always rise.”
I wiped a line of sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, my dark skin glowing like polished mahogany under the filtered afternoon light.
My black yoga shorts were damp, hugging the thick, powerful curves of my thighs, and my tank top was stuck to the center of my sports bra.
I felt heavy, but it wasn't the heaviness of sadness anymore; it was the dense, unyielding weight of muscle and intention.
A few yards down the track, a massive, ancient oak tree reached its limbs over the path, its bark dark and deeply grooved from decades of weathering. One specific branch hung low enough to reach if I jumped, a thick, gnarled arm of wood that looked entirely unbreakable.
I walked up to it, kicked my heels into the gravel to get a solid footing, and looked up. “Time to test these arms, baby. Let's see what we really working with today.”
I leaped, my arms extending fully as my fingers wrapped around the rough, unforgiving bark.
The friction bit instantly into the small, hardened calluses on my palms, a sharp, grounding pain that made me feel intensely alive.
I let my body hang for a single second, completely straight, feeling the full stretch in my spine and the pull in my abdominal walls.
Then, I pulled.
One. My chin cleared the wood, my biceps bunching, my shoulders locking into place with a controlled, mechanical precision.
Two. My breath came out in a sharp, focused hiss through my teeth. The heat of the day seemed to intensify, the smell of the damp earth rising up to meet me.
Three. My muscles began to sing with a sweet, deep burn, the type of discomfort that tells you you're building something that can't be easily broken.
By the time I hit ten, my chest was heaving, the sweat pouring down my temples and pooling in the collar of my shirt.
I dropped back down to the gravel, my knees bending slightly to absorb the impact.
The ground felt solid beneath my feet. I stood up straight, shaking the tension out of my arms, a loud, breathless laugh bubbling up from my chest before I could stop it.
“Whew! Look at God,” I muttered, wiping my palms on my shorts. “Ciara ain’t playing with y’all no more. Not this year.”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wireless earbuds, and shoved them into my ears, tapping the side to start the music.
Instantly, the heavy, bass-driven rhythm of a 90s R I immediately broke into a steady, purposeful jog, my feet finding a natural, instinctive placement among the old wooden ties.