I don’t stop walking until my lungs burn.
The city is already awake—cars slicing through intersections, vendors shouting, people laughing too loudly for this early—but it all feels unreal, like I’m moving through a pane of glass. My body knows where to go even as my mind fractures behind my eyes. The rhythm of the pavement beneath my boots is the only thing keeping me from dissolving into the grey morning mist.
I don’t look back. If I do, I won’t leave. That realization terrifies me more than anything Darian said. It’s the gravity of him, the way he pulls at the core of me, threatening to drag me out of the orbit I’ve spent a year perfectng.
The memory of his face when I turned away keeps trying to surface—the way his mouth opened like he had more to say, the wounded disbelief in his ey
