Chapter 15 #2
Maybe then, I’ll stop waking up wondering why I wasn’t worth staying for.
Maybe then, I’ll stop writing letters he’ll never read.
Lola’s silence stretches, long and brittle.
Then she exhales — one of those breaths that sounds like it’s carrying its own history. “You know,” she says gently, “it’s okay to say it.”
“Say what?”
She tilts her head. “That you didn’t just fall for him. You fell into him. Like a fucking open wound.”
My throat cinches tight. “I didn’t—”
“You did.” It’s not cruel. It’s tired. It’s honest. “You did, Cass. And now you’re running headfirst into a war zone because you think it’ll hurt less than staying.”
I flinch because she’s too right.
I laugh — a sharp, broken sound. “Want to add that to my psych eval? Might help them pack the meds.”
She doesn’t even smile.
She just studies me like she’s already bracing for the goodbye.
“Cass…” Her voice wavers. “You could still call him. You could—”
“No.”
She blinks. “Why not?”
“Because he chose to leave me in that kitchen.” My voice curdles, bitter and electric. “He said goodbye like I was a mistake he had to amputate.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Don’t I?” My breath shudders. “He didn’t say goodbye. Not really. He walked out like trying to stay would’ve destroyed him.”
I stare at my duffel.
Folded so neatly.
So small.
So inadequate for everything I’m carrying.
“He left,” I whisper. “And he didn’t look back.”
Lola is quiet again.
Then, softly: “He asked about you.”
My eyes snap up.
“What?”
She shifts her weight, looking off like the confession is made of glass.
“Three days ago. Called while you were getting vaccinations. Said he just wanted to know if you were okay.”
I freeze.
Something in my chest — something delicate, stupid, hopeful — splinters.
He’s alive.
He remembers.
And he still didn’t reach for me.
“He asked if you were eating,” she continues. “Said you forget when you’re anxious.”
I swallow — or try to. “Did you tell him I’m fine?” I rasp.
“No,” she says. “I told him you’re not. I told him you’re breaking.”
Lola steps closer. Her voice softens in the way people speak to the injured.
“I told him you write his name on the edge of your notepad. I told him you fold his hoodie like it’s scripture. I told him you cry in your sleep.”
My vision goes blurry. “Why would you tell him that?”
“Because it’s the truth,” she whispers. “And because you won’t.”
My hand flies to my mouth, but the sob slips out anyway.
Lola catches me before I fall.
I crumble.
All the way.
For the first time since he left — I fall apart.
No words.
No explanations.
Just grief.
Just the sound of my ribs splitting open and my heart collapsing under its own weight.
Lola’s arms hold me tight.
“I’ll wait for you,” she murmurs. “Even if he doesn’t.”
I don’t let go.
Not yet.
Not while she’s the only thing keeping me standing.
“You think he hates me,” I whisper into her shoulder.
“No.” Her answer comes fast, certain. “I think he’s terrified.”
“Of what?”
“That you’ll come back someone else. That you’ll come back just like him.”
The words hit like a blow because they’re true.
I am changing.
I can feel it happening like a slow leak under my skin.
The girl who kissed him under the stars is already fading, dissolving, hardening.
“I’m scared, Lo.”
“I know.”
“I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I feel like my body’s here but the rest of me’s already gone.”
She presses her cheek against my hair. “Then hold on to the part that still loves him.”
My breath stutters. “I don’t know how.”
“Start small,” she murmurs. “Pack his hoodie. Write his name in your journal. Say goodbye to him like he didn’t.”
Something brittle snaps inside me. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“Then don’t.” Her hands tighten around my arms. “Say I love you. Say come back. Say you ruined me and I still fucking miss you. Just say something.”
We pull apart slowly.
Her eyes are red.
Mine are worse.
We’re just two broken girls pretending we’re ready for war.
“Don’t die,” I whisper.
“You either.”
She bends, picks up the small plushie from my bag — the stupid jellybean with legs he won me at the fair, the one he shoved at me with a crooked grin like he wasn’t falling.
Lola smirks through her tears. “He’d want you to take this.”
I stare at it — at the memory sewn into its seams.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “He would.”
She opens my duffel and nestles it inside like it’s something sacred.
Then she grips both my arms, firm and urgent.
“Promise me you’ll come back.”
I hesitate.
“I can’t—”
“No.” Her gaze sharpens. “Promise.”
My voice trembles.
But I nod.
And I say it:
“I promise.”
Even if it’s a lie.
Even if it breaks me.
Even if the world I’m walking into has a habit of eating promises alive because she needs to hear it. I need to believe it and maybe — in some fractured corner of me still shaped like him —He needs it too.
The room is quiet.
Too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that soothes.
The kind that rings.
The kind that whispers back.
No humming fridge.
No Lola laughing at her own jokes.
No scent of burnt toast clinging to the curtains.
No trace of that stupid, sacred hoodie I stopped wearing because it smells too much like him—like warmth and danger and all the things I was foolish enough to believe could stay.
Just me and the sterile white of a cot that doesn’t belong to anyone yet. A blank space waiting to be filled with someone’s exhaustion, someone’s sweat, someone’s nightmares.
My duffel’s packed.
My name’s printed on the manifest.
My armour—the emotional kind—is cracked and peeling.
My flight leaves at 0700.
And the only thing I haven’t done yet is cry.
Not really.
Not properly.
Not the kind of cry that steals the oxygen from your lungs and reminds you that you were stupid enough to love someone who was always halfway gone.
Not the kind of cry that digs its claws beneath your ribs and whispers, you should’ve known better.
So I reach for the pen.
The one I swore I wouldn’t use and the paper.
The sheet I tucked inside the med kit like a coward hiding her own confession.
I write his name at the top.
Just his name.
Dax.
I stare at the letters until they blur—until his name looks like smoke rising off a battlefield.
And then I start.
Dax,
You didn’t say goodbye.
Not really.
You said goodbye, butterfly with that voice that sounds like smoke and regret, the one that snaps spines and pretends it’s anger.
But that wasn’t a goodbye.
That was a severing.
A punishment wrapped in softness.
You left me standing barefoot in a kitchen drenched in syrup and silence, and now every time I touch my skin I keep wondering if you can still taste me on your fingers.
And I hate you for that.
I hate you for all of it.
For making five minutes feel like a future.
For looking at me like I was home and then walking away like I was a bruise you regretted pressing.
But I love you more.
God, I love you more.
And that’s the part that makes this letter a weapon.
Because if I start telling the truth—I won’t stop.
You think you’re the one who dies in this story.
But Dax… you already did.
You died the moment you stopped believing you were worth waiting for.
The moment you looked at me and saw a threat instead of a reason to come back.
The moment you decided you didn’t have anything left in you worth trying for.
I’m not going to war because I want to be brave.
I’m going because I don’t know how to breathe in a world where you’re not coming back.
I thought maybe if I did something brave enough, painful enough, loud enough—you’d hear it across whatever hell you’re in.
You’d feel it.
You’d find your way back to me.
I wanted to be the girl who could survive your silence.
But I’m not.
I’m the girl who holds your toothbrush like a relic, who listens to that voicemail you left two months ago until my battery dies, who whispers your name into the steam of the shower like it’ll wash the guilt off my skin.
I’m the girl who writes letters she’ll never send because she’s too terrified of seeing nothing but indifference staring back.
You’re going to come home broken.
And I won’t be here.
I’ll be somewhere with blood drying on my boots and someone else’s heartbeat slipping out beneath my palms, and all I’ll think about—stupidly, selfishly—is you.
Your hands.
Your voice.
That smirk that made me fall in love with the wrong kind of salvation.
You didn’t say goodbye.
So let me say it for both of us.
Goodbye to pancakes and humming in the kitchen.
Goodbye to that perfect night under the stars.
Goodbye to the way you said my name like it tasted like hope.
Goodbye to the version of me who thought she could be enough to keep you soft.
And goodbye to the version of you who let me go.
Because I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.
If you find this letter—
it means I didn’t come back either.
Not really.
Not as the girl you kissed under the August sky.
Not as the girl who said yes when you smeared syrup on her lips and called her mine.
But I hope you come back.
Even if I’m not there.
Even if you hate me.
Even if you never speak my name again.
Because I’ll be somewhere out there, loving you in silence.
Always.
—
Cass
I don’t read it.
I don’t fold it neatly.
I just slide it under my thin pillow like a landmine—something that could destroy someone if they step on it wrong and then I lie down.
Eyes open.
Body still.
Heart a barely-beating bruise.
No tears because the body only cries when it believes someone is still listening. And right now?
No one is.
Not him.
Not the stars.
Not the quiet.
Just me.
Breathing through the ache of loving someone who walked away and walking toward a war that might finish what he started.