The decision arrived in the middle of the night like a fever.
I sat on the edge of the thin hostel mattress with my phone in both hands and the screen glowing too bright in the dark. Daniel’s name sat at the top of the message thread I had refused to open for days. The last thing he had sent was still there, unanswered, a single line that had arrived the morning after I found him inside my mother.
*Please just let me explain.*
I had deleted every call log. I had ignored every attempt. I had walked past him in corridors and on the ice like he was already a stranger. And still the original wound had not closed. It sat under everything else—under the bruises that had faded, under the memory of Damian’s body, under the four days of silence and the competition and the unanswered question. Th
