Chapter 30
The walk home was long, the walk probably took five times the usual.
I didn't remember leaving the bar. I didn't remember crossing the street or walking down the block or passing the familiar landmarks that usually told me I was getting close to home.
My feet carried me forward on their own, one step after another, but my mind was somewhere else entirely, trapped in that back office with the grainy CCTV footage and the manager's pale face and the words that had shattered everything I thought I knew.
He wasn't an escort.
Room four was reserved for private guests.
If you're smart, you won't try to find out.
The city was loud around me, cars honking and people shouting and the endless rush of a world that didn't care that mine had just collapsed.
But I couldn't hear any of it. The sounds blurred together into a dull roar, muffled and distant, like I was listening from underwater.
My ears were numb. My eyes were numb. My whole body was numb, hollowed out, floating somewhere above the pavement while my legs kept moving beneath me.
I didn't know how I got home. The door was in front of me suddenly, and I was fumbling for my keys, and then I was inside, and the apartment was dark and cold and empty, just like I had left it.
I walked to the bedroom on autopilot, my shoes still on, his hoodie still pulled tight around my shoulders. I didn't bother to turn on the lights. I didn't bother to do anything except fall onto the bed and stare at the ceiling and try to remember how to breathe.
This had to be wrong. This had to be a mistake.
The manager had been confused, or the footage had been mislabeled, or maybe I was dreaming all of it.
Any minute now I would wake up, and he would be here, walking through the living room with that infuriating half-smile, or standing in the kitchen making coffee with no shirt on, and he would catch me staring and raise an eyebrow and say something like
"take a picture kitten, it lasts longer" and everything would be fine.
I pressed my nails into my palms, hard enough to leave marks, hard enough to feel something.
But my hands were so cold and so numb that I couldn't even register the pain.
I couldn't feel anything except the hollow ache in my chest and the tears burning behind my eyes and the terrible, crushing weight of knowing that he had never been who I thought he was.
I picked up my phone, one more time...
My fingers moved on their own, opening his contact, pressing the call button. The phone rang once, twice, three times, and then the voicemail picked up, the same automated voice I had heard a hundred times in the past few days, telling me that the person I was trying to reach was unavailable.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out at first. My throat was too tight, my voice buried somewhere under the sobs that were building in my chest like a storm I couldn't hold back anymore. I sniffled, swallowed, tried again.
".....Caspian"
My voice cracked on his name.
"I heard t— that you're not an escort. I... I heard that you're n— not some struggling unem— umemployed man barely meeting en— ends.... Is that... Is t— that why you refused to tell me w— what you did on your laptop?"
A dry chuckle escaped me, bitter and hollow.
"I th— thought....you were just watching some perverted stuff...."
I stopped, my breath hitching, my hand pressing against my mouth to hold back the sob that was trying to escape.
"C— Caspian... why...? W— why didn't you tell me the tr— truth? Why...? D— did you... Did you... not trust me enough? After e— everything Cas...? A— ater... after..."
I couldn't finish the sentence. The sob broke through, raw and ugly, and I let it because I didn't have the strength to hold it back anymore. I cried into the phone, into the silence, into the empty apartment that felt too big and too quiet without him in it.
I took a deep breath, then another, trying to steady myself, trying to find my voice again.
".......You never actually lied...." I said, and the words came out hoarse and broken.
"I j— just assumed... I assumed y— you were an escort. I assumed you... you were poor. I assumed you needed me. You never said any of it. You just... let me believe it."
My voice cracked again.
"S— still... still... you should have told me. You should have said s— something. You should have—"
The sobs overtook me again, and I pressed my free hand against my chest like I could hold myself together that way, like I could keep my heart from breaking into pieces too small to ever put back together.
"P—lease..." I whispered. "Please.... come back..... P— please.... I... I'm begging you...."
I had never begged anyone to stay. Not after my father walked out with some other woman and didn't look back, no matter how much I cried.
That's when I decided not to beg for anyone to stay.
I never begged for anyone after that. Not when Oliver betrayed me with the one person I trusted most.
Not when Anne smiled at me like nothing had happened, like she hadn't destroyed something I had spent years building.
I had never begged.
But I was begging now.
"Please... P— please don't leave me.... Caspian. I... I'll forgive you.....!I... I won't be mad at you for h— hiding the truth..! I don't care who you are or what you do or why you lied.... I just... j— just... need you to come back. I just... need to know you're safe."
I closed my eyes, and the tears spilled down my cheeks, hot and relentless.
".....I love you..."
The words came out before I could stop them, raw and honest and terrifying.
I had never said them before. I had thought them a hundred times, a thousand times, had let them sit on the tip of my tongue while I tried to find the right moment, the right words, the right way to say something that felt too big for my mouth.
And now I was saying them to a voicemail.
But I couldn't stop.
"Cas... I... l— love you... and I can't lose more people anymore. I can't. Please.... Pl— please come back.... Please...."
The voicemail beeped, and the call ended, and I was alone again in the dark with nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the weight of everything I had just said hanging in the air.
I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, my phone still clutched in my hand.
The apartment felt wrong now. Too big, too empty, too quiet.
Every corner of it held a memory of him, and every memory was a knife twisting in my chest.
The kitchen where he had cooked for me night after night.
The couch where he had held me while I cried.
The bed where he had slept beside me, his arm draped over my waist, his breath warm against my neck.
I had built a future here. I had made plans. I had imagined him in this apartment for months, years, as long as he would stay. And now he was gone, and I didn't even know his real name.
The tears kept coming, soaking into the pillow, dripping down my cheeks, and I didn't try to stop them. I didn't have the strength. I just lay there and let myself fall apart, because there was nothing else left to do.
Eventually, the sobs quieted into soft sniffles, and the sniffles faded into shaky breaths, and the exhaustion that had been building for days finally pulled me under.
My eyes grew heavy, and my body went limp, and I fell asleep still wearing his hoodie, still clutching my phone, still hoping that when I woke up he would be there.