Why did he have to use my worst fears against me — my mental illness, my anxiety, the one thing I always hated most about myself?
The panic began to rise again, curling in my stomach, crawling up my throat. My hands flew to my chest, pressing hard, like I could force it back down. My vision blurred, the walls seemed to close in, and I curled into a ball, gasping, whispering his name between sobs.
“Ace… please… please come back…”
I didn’t know how long I lay there.
Hours.
Maybe days.
I didn’t sleep.
I didn’t eat.
I just lay in that bed, tracing the empty space where his body used to be, running my fingers along the cold sheets, trying to convince myself this was just one of his cruel jokes, that he would walk through that door any moment, smirk at me, pull me into his arms and whisper that he was sorry.
But the sun set.
And rose.
And set again.
And Ace never came back.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed, my reflection in the mirror startled me. My eyes were swollen, rimmed red, my skin pale, lips cracked, hair tangled. I looked like a ghost — a hollow version of the girl I used to be.
I sat on the edge of the bathtub, trembling hands wrapping around a glass of water, and tried to remember how to breathe without him.
I thought about all the times I had pulled him back from his own darkness, all the times I had held him when the weight of his world became too much.
And now, when I needed him — when I was breaking — he was gone.
He didn’t just leave me.
He annihilated me.
My phone buzzed somewhere in the apartment, but I couldn’t bring myself to check it. I knew it wasn’t him. It wouldn’t be him.
The hours blurred again, the ache in my chest settling into something deeper, heavier. Grief, I realized. I was grieving himlike you grieve the dead. Because Ace wasn’t just gone — he had buried himself under lies, under cruelty, under words that I would never be able to un-hear.
“I never loved you.”
“You were just convenient.”
“Sierra’s stable, strong — not a mess like you.”
I pressed my fists against my temples, squeezing my eyes shut as the words echoed over and over, slicing into me.
I wondered if he was with her now — if he was laughing, smiling, brushing her hair back, whispering the things he used to whisper to me.
I wondered if she got the version of him I never could.
A knock sounded at the door, faint but insistent.
I sat frozen, staring at it, my heart hammering in my chest.
For one wild, foolish second, I hoped.
