EMMA
Silence
I tell myself silence is a choice.
That it’s something I do, not something that happens to me.
But the truth is—silence wraps around me like a punishment I didn’t know how to refuse.
The first thing I do after I collapse at the roadside stop is turn my phone off. Not airplane mode. Not mute. Off. Completely. As if that will sever the invisible thread vibrating inside my chest, the one that keeps pulling me back toward a place I ran from.
Toward him.
I don’t check messages. I don’t check missed calls. I don’t give myself the chance to see his name light up my screen like a wound reopening.
When I finally turn the phone back on the next morning, my hands shake so badly I almost drop it.
I don’t read anything.
I block him.
Gabriel Moreau—blocked.
The number I memorize
