Chapter 8: What’s Left After Fire
379 Words
It unraveled quickly after that night.
Leila was the first to find out — not from whispers, not from gossip. She found Ella’s bra stuffed in the back seat of her uncle’s car. Same color Ella had worn at the engagement party. Same perfume. Same betrayal.
She didn’t scream.
Didn’t confront her.
She just stopped talking.
Ella noticed the silence like a hole in the sky.
Then Brian found out.
He saw a message pop up on Ella’s phone:
> “I miss you. I still taste you.”
Roman.
Brian didn’t yell either. He just handed her the phone, eyes rimmed red, jaw clenched.
“You could’ve just told me you didn’t love me anymore.”
That broke her more than any slap ever could.
She had tried to tell herself it meant nothing — that Roman was just an escape. But the truth?
He was the only place she ever felt seen.
Roman’s wife discovered the affair next — not from messages or lipstick stains. From the change in him. His restlessness. The way he smiled less at home and more when Ella’s name was mentioned in passing.
There was shouting.
Glass breaking.
Ella heard from Leila, who said her uncle had moved into a separate apartment.
“You destroyed them,” Leila texted.
But Ella didn’t reply.
She was already packing.
A full scholarship to study in Canada had come unexpectedly. Her academic mentor submitted her essay without telling her. “Bright girl like you shouldn’t rot in shadows,” the professor said.
So she took it.
Not to escape.
But to breathe.
The airport was cold. Not just the air, but the silence around her. A kind of goodbye that stung even before it was spoken.
Ella sat with her bag clutched to her side, phone buzzing in her palm.
Roman.
> “I’m parked outside. If you still want this… I’m yours.”
Her eyes burned. She looked out the window.
And there it was.
His car.
Waiting.
Wanting.
She stood slowly. Her heart thumped like it wanted to run.
But her feet didn’t turn that way.
She turned toward her gate.
She never replied.
Because some loves aren’t meant to be kept.
They’re meant to be survived.
> Too taken to let go.
- Writer
