8
Vanessa
The end came with silence. The kind of silence that settles in your bones when you know everything’s about to collapse and you go through with it anyway.
I told myself I was going to the office to pick up files I’d forgotten. It was Sunday. Jake was out. I had time. Time to breathe. Time to not think. But the moment I stepped out of the elevator and saw the light bleeding under Adrian’s office door, my chest tightened.
He was here too. Of course he was.
One more time. That’s what we always said. Just one more.
I didn’t knock. I opened the door, my heart beating too hard, and there he was standing behind his desk in a black dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, hair pushed back like he’d run his fingers through it one too many times.
He looked up, and some kind of recognition and
