Chapter 11 #6
“So,” she says quietly, cautious, “are we going to talk about it?”
I keep my gaze fixed on the tub. “About what?”
She scoffs under her breath, a soft, disbelieving sound. “Cass. I’m not blind.”
I set down the spoon and press the heels of my palms against my eyes, hard, like pressure might stop the tears I’ve been swallowing since he kissed me like he meant it — like he was desperate and drowning and using my mouth to surface.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” I whisper.
She bumps her shoulder into mine, gentle but certain. “You don’t have to.”
And suddenly it rips out of me, raw and unprepared.
“I think I love him, Lo.”
The words fall from my mouth like something I’ve been holding between my teeth for days, and the moment they hit the air, everything splits. Breaks. Breathes.
Her hand slips into mine instantly, tight and warm and without hesitation. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t judge.
“Of course you do.”
I blink at her, startled. “What?”
She gives me a smile so small it hurts, a smile with a crack down the centre.
“Cass… I knew it the second I saw your face that night. After the kiss. You looked wrecked — not confused, not scared, not even guilty. Wrecked. And when you came home after seeing him again, you looked worse. And I just…” Her voice fractures.
“I just wanted to protect you from it. From him. From what this was going to do to you if you let yourself fall.”
My throat closes.
I squeeze her hand. “I know.”
“You fall slow,” she says, eyes glistening now. “But when you fall, you free-fall.”
A humourless laugh escapes me. “I don’t fall at all. Not ever.”
“You do for him.”
And there it is — the thing I’ve been avoiding.
“You’re falling for the one man who doesn’t get to stay.”
That breaks me.
The tears come, sudden and hot, sliding down my cheeks faster than I can wipe them away. She pulls me into her arms, wraps herself around me like a shield, like a sister, like the only person who’s ever stayed long enough to know the temperature of my grief.
“I’m trying to hold it together,” I breathe into her shoulder. “I’m trying to just enjoy whatever time I have with him, but it already hurts. And he’s not even gone yet.”
She holds me tighter. “I know.”
“And then I’m leaving too.”
“I know.”
“It’s so fucked.”
“I know, baby.”
We stay like that for a while, two girls clinging to each other on a sofa that’s seen too many versions of us. Her hoodie still smells like lavender softener. My hair is damp from the shower I stood under until the water went cold. The living room light hums above us like it knows too much.
Eventually, I whisper, “I don’t want to leave you.”
Her breath stutters. “Then don’t.”
“I can’t. I already signed. I got accepted, Lo. I’m going. It’s real.” I swallow. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”
“I know.” Her voice shakes. “And I’m proud of you. I’m just… scared. Scared I’m going to lose you too.”
“You won’t.” I lift her hand and press it to my chest, grounding myself in the warmth of it. “You’re my family. I will come back to you.”
“You better,” she says, a wet laugh breaking through tears. “Because if you don’t—”
“I will.”
Silence again — a quieter one, but still heavy, still stitched with fear neither of us can name.
Then she asks it.
Softly.
Fatally.
“Does he know?”
I go still.
“Know what?”
“That you’re going. In sixty days. That you’ll be gone and he won’t even get to say goodbye.”
My stomach drops.
Because no.
He doesn’t know.
Not yet.
But he will.
God, he will.
And I don’t know if that’ll be the moment that finally breaks him too.
“I’m not going to tell him,” I say, voice barely more than breath.
Lola stiffens beside me.
“Cass—”
“He’s leaving in thirty days.” I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand, but it doesn’t stop the shaking. “Thirty fucking days, Lo. What’s the point?”
“You’re the point,” she snaps, voice suddenly fierce through the tears. “Don’t you dare act like he wouldn’t care.”
A bitter laugh cracks in my chest. “He won’t even notice I’m gone.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t make yourself small just to survive him.”
Her voice breaks on survive.
I freeze.
Because she’s right.
And I hate that she’s right.
“You act like he isn’t going to unravel the second you’re gone,” she says, wiping her cheeks. “You act like he doesn’t ache for you. Like he didn’t tear a man apart in front of an entire club because he touched you. Like he doesn’t look at you like he’s terrified you’ll vanish.”
I look down at my hands, trembling in my lap.
Because I saw it.
I saw all of it.
“I’ve watched him suffer,” she whispers. “And now I’m watching you suffer too. And I swear to God, if I lose both of you—”
Her voice breaks completely.
I move without thinking, grabbing her hand and holding it between both of mine. “I’m not going to die, Lo.”
“You don’t get it,” she sobs. “He’s already dying. Every day. Every minute. Ever since—” She stops herself. Swallows. Starts again. “He smiles less. He talks less. He barely breathes when you’re not in the room.”
My heart twists.
“And you’re leaving,” she says. “And I can’t stop either of you.”
“I just…” My voice splinters. “I don’t want to be another thing he leaves behind.”
She looks at me with eyes that see too much. “Then don’t leave him behind.”
I shake my head. “I’m not asking him to come back to me. I just want him to come back.”
Because loving someone who’s always leaving doesn’t give you the right to ask them to stay.
Lola nods slowly — understanding in the way only someone who’s lived this loss can understand.
We sit like that, fingers tangled, breaths uneven, the weight of everything we’re too scared to say pressing down on both of us.
Finally, she pours more wine, topping up our glasses even though neither of us has finished the first. Her hands tremble, but she doesn’t hide it. I don’t point it out.
We drink in silence.
A heavy silence, thick with fear and love and the slow-burning ache of something that already feels like goodbye.
“He won’t even notice I’m gone,” I whisper again, softer this time, more to myself than her, like maybe if I speak it enough I’ll believe it.
Lola turns to me, eyes glistening.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t shrink yourself to make leaving easier. Not for him. And not for yourself.”
I swallow hard.
She takes my hand again.
And in a voice that trembles but never wavers, she says:
“You’re not forgettable, Cass. Not to him. And not to me. Don’t rewrite yourself into a ghost just because you’re afraid he’ll disappear.”
The breath leaves me in a shudder.
Because hope is a cruel fucking thing.
And I’ve always been better at goodbyes than hope.
Lola falls asleep with her head on my lap, her lashes stuck together from old mascara and her heartbeat heavy against my thigh, heavier than it should ever be for someone who has fought so hard to carve out a little peace in a world that keeps stealing it back from her.
I thread my fingers through her hair — slow, rhythmic, careful — and stare up at the ceiling like maybe, somewhere in the cracks and shadows of this old apartment, there’s a sign waiting for me, a map, a direction, a single merciful answer to all the endings barreling towards us.
But there isn’t one.
There never was.
When her breathing shifts, turning soft and shallow and edged with the tiniest snore, I slide out from under her, easing her head onto a cushion like I’m placing something precious down in a museum glass case.
I move through the apartment on bare feet, quiet as breath, quiet as heartbreak, quiet as the version of myself I never let anyone see — the one that feels too much and says too little.
Because if I’m loud…
If I let even one sound slip…
All of this will spill out of me.
Every fear. Every ache. Every truth.
And I can’t let that happen.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
I open the kitchen drawer and pull out my old notebook — the one with the bent spine and faded cover, the one I used to write songs in back when I thought dreaming was something that could save me instead of hurt me.
I flip through the pages, scanning the old lyrics, the old metaphors, the ghost versions of myself clinging to every line.
And then I tear them out.
All of them.
I don’t want old words.
I need new ones.
Ones that belong to him.
Ones he’ll never see.
I sit at the table, the light above flickering with that low hum it always makes right before it burns out. My pen shakes between my fingers, my pulse thudding too loud in my ears.
And then I write.
Letter One
Dax,
You kissed me like I was a dream.
Then you woke up and looked at me like I was a mistake.
Do you know what that does to a girl?
To be everything in one moment and nothing in the next?
I wish I could hate you.
God, I wish I could.
But I can’t.
Because every time I close my eyes, you’re there.
Every time I breathe in, I swear I still taste you.
Every time I touch my own skin, I feel your hands.
And it hurts.
Because I know you’re going.
And I know I’m going.
And somehow we still couldn’t find a way to meet in the middle.
Thirty days.
That’s all we have.
But you don’t even know I’m counting.
—Cassandra
I fold the letter carefully — too carefully — like it’s something sacred, something fragile, something holy in a way love shouldn’t ever be but somehow still is. I tuck it beneath my pillow like I’m thirteen again and hiding secrets in places I hope no one ever checks.
Maybe it is sacred.
Maybe this version of me — the one who bleeds quietly onto paper because she’s too afraid to bleed out loud — is the only version he’d ever understand.
Maybe it’s the only way I know how to survive him.
I pull out another sheet.
Fresh.
Blank.
Waiting.
My hands shake.
I write anyway.
LETTER TWO
Dax,
Do you remember the night in the mirror room?
The way your hands shook when you touched me?
The way you looked at me like I was a light you didn’t think you deserved?
I think about that night too much.
I think about what it would’ve felt like if you didn’t stop.
If you’d let me fall all the way.
Maybe I already did.
Maybe I’ve been falling since the second you looked at me.
And now I’m writing letters to a man who’ll never read them.
Because he’s leaving.
And I’m leaving.
And what the fuck do you do with a love story that doesn’t have a middle?
What the fuck do you do with a love story that was over before it even began?
—Cassandra
I sit there in the dark with nothing but the quiet hum of the fridge, the soft rhythm of Lola breathing in the other room, and the ink drying on the pages in front of me — my confessions wrapped in secrets wrapped in fear.
I don’t cry.
Because if I start now, I know I won’t stop.
And I can’t fall apart yet.
Not while there’s still time.
Not while there’s still him.
Not while there’s still one more letter inside me —
the one I can’t bear to write
and can’t bear to leave unwritten.
The letter that will hurt the most.
The letter he’ll never see.
The letter that might break me more than losing him ever could.