Chapter 1
Alexis
I have been awake for hours before I finally decide to leave.
Not the dramatic kind of awake—the kind where your body is still, heavy beneath the sheets, but your mind keeps walking in circles, retracing old arguments, rehearsing conversations you already know will never go the way you need them to. I stare at the ceiling and count the cracks like they might offer a different ending if I look long enough.
Kiara is beside me, turned slightly away, her breathing uneven. I know that rhythm. I helped create it. Some nights she breathes like this when she’s anxious, some nights when she’s pretending to sleep. Tonight, I don’t ask which one it is. I don’t reach for her. I don’t whisper her name.
I have learned that touching her when I am already drowning only teaches her how to pull me under with her.
Carefully, I slip out of bed. The floor is cold, grounding. I welcome the sting—it reminds me that I still exist outside of how she feels, outside of what she needs, outside of the version of me she’s been shaping for five years.
Five years.
Five years distilled into this quiet moment where I am trying not to make a sound while my entire life rearranges itself.
The apartment hums softly, familiar and exhausted, like it knows what’s coming and is too tired to protest. This place has heard everything—the fights whispered through clenched teeth, the apologies that weren’t really apologies, the promises that only existed to keep me from leaving.
I move to the dresser and open it inch by inch. Every drawer holds a version of me that belonged to her. Clothes she picked out. Clothes she hated. Clothes I stopped wearing because she once said, sharply, that they made me look like I was trying to impress someone else.
I remember laughing it off. Remember apologizing. Remember folding myself smaller so she wouldn’t feel threatened by who I was.
I fold slowly now, deliberately. If I rush, I might panic. If I panic, I might remember all the times she cried and said she couldn’t live without me. All the times she told me leaving her would destroy her. All the times she promised—swore—she would change.
And I can’t afford to remember those things tonight.
I can’t stay.
I keep telling myself that. Like a mantra. Like a warning label slapped onto my own heart.
I can’t stay.
I loved Kiara in a way that felt like devotion. At first, it was beautiful—intoxicating, even. We learned each other quickly, eagerly, as if we were afraid time would run out if we didn’t memorize everything at once. Her laugh when she was surprised. The way she softened when I touched her back. The way she looked at me like I was the answer to every fear she had ever carried.
I wanted to be her safe place.
Somewhere along the way, being her safe place turned into being her possession.
She didn’t let anyone come between us—not friends, not family, not even my own doubts. If I wanted space, she called it abandonment. If I needed time, she called it punishment. If I tried to leave, she called it betrayal.
And when anger didn’t work, she cried.
That was always the part that broke me.
I glance toward the bedroom door, half-expecting her to be standing there, watching me with that familiar mix of hurt and accusation. Kiara never needed to yell. Her cruelty was quieter than that—sharper. It lived in her words, in the way she knew exactly where to press until I felt ashamed for wanting anything at all.
I failed a lot.
Or at least, she taught me to believe I did.
Every time I tried to explain—how heavy it felt, how exhausted I was, how I felt like I was disappearing—she turned it around so seamlessly I barely noticed it happening. Suddenly we weren’t talking about my pain anymore. We were talking about hers. About how scared she was. About how broken she felt. About how I was the only thing keeping her together.
By the end of those nights, I was always the one apologizing.
Promising to stay.
Promising to try harder.
Promising things I didn’t know how to give.
I meant it.
That’s the most dangerous part. I always meant it.
I pack my bag in pieces, pausing too often. The grey T-shirt slips through my fingers and I almost laugh. Mine, technically. But worn almost exclusively by her. She said it smelled like me. Said she needed it when I wasn’t around.
I gave it to her because saying no felt cruel. Saying no always felt cruel.
I press it to my face now, inhale, and my chest tightens. Love shouldn’t feel like this—like grief before anything has even ended. Like fear dressed up as devotion.
I sit on the edge of the bed to steady myself. The mattress dips slightly, and Kiara shifts. My heart slams into my ribs. For a moment, I’m back in the loop—imagining her waking up, seeing the bag, asking where I’m going with that trembling voice she perfected.
I already know how it would go.
She would say she can’t live without me.
She would say she’ll change.
She would say she didn’t mean the things she said when she was angry.
She would say this time is different.
And I would stay.
Again.
She doesn’t wake.
I stare at her face in the dim light. She looks younger when she sleeps. Softer. Like the girl I fell in love with before fear and control tangled themselves into everything we touched.
I brush a strand of hair away from her face, then stop myself.
Touching her now would be a lie.
I step into the hallway, my bag heavier than it should be. My chest feels hollow, like something vital has already been carved out of me. Anxiety hums beneath my skin, sharp and familiar. I have lived like this for years—measuring my words, anticipating her moods, bracing myself for the next accusation disguised as concern.
This relationship taught my anxiety how to survive.
People talk about toxic relationships like they’re obvious. Like someone has to be screaming, hitting, breaking things. They don’t talk about the manipulation wrapped in love. The lies told out of fear. The way someone can hurt you deeply while insisting they’re the victim.
I don’t think Kiara ever wanted to be this way. I think she loved me desperately and didn’t know how to love without control. I think she was terrified of losing me—and so she made leaving impossible.
Until now.
In the kitchen, the pen feels too heavy in my hand. What do you write to someone who has kept you trapped with tears and promises?
I love you.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
I can’t do this anymore.
Every sentence feels like a doorway back into the loop.
So I write her name. Just that. Clean. Final.
I think about all the times I almost left. The nights I sat in my car, shaking, convincing myself that staying was kindness. That love meant endurance. That walking away would make me the villain she already believed I was.
Love didn’t save us.
Love kept me stuck.
At the door, my hand trembles violently. This is the moment that will rewrite everything. The moment she will replay, reshape, and one day maybe understand—or maybe never.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, not knowing who it’s for anymore.
The door closes softly behind me.
The hallway smells like old carpet and someone else’s cooking. The world keeps going. I stand there, my bag at my feet, my chest aching with the weight of what I’ve done and what I’ve survived.
There is no relief.
Just grief.
And guilt.
And fear.
But beneath it all, there is something new.
Space.
A breath that doesn’t belong to her.
I take it—even as it hurts.
And this time, I don’t turn back.
