The Last Goodbye
The night was restless, humming with the tension of things unsaid. I moved through the shadows, the envelope from my father pressed against my side as though it were the only heartbeat I could trust. My feet carried me away from the pack house, not toward the woods this time, but toward a small cluster of cabins where two familiar faces lived.
Hannah and Louis.
My closest friends. My only friends.
I should have gone straight into exile. That’s what Father wanted. But if I vanished without a word, without a goodbye, the weight of it would break me before Derrick ever could.
The air was sharp with pine as I approached Hannah’s cabin, the lantern in the window still burning. She never slept early — a habit of hers that once annoyed me, but now it felt like fate.
I tappe
