"Do you really think I could ever trust you again?" she asked, the words brittle and bleeding. "What happens the next time I need too much? What if I get sick, or scared, or sad in a way you can't fix? What if life throws something awful at us? Will you go running again? Will you stop loving me again?"
The silence that followed her question was deafening.
Because I didn't have an answer she could believe in.
"ForyearsI thought we were building something real. Something unshakable. I gave you everything I had—my loyalty, my love, my time—and still, the moment she came back, you cracked like it was nothing. Like I was nothing."
Her voice shook—so quiet, so raw, I had to close my eyes just to survive it.
"And now... even if you say you love me, even if Iwantedto believe it... you've made it impossible. Because now there's this voice in my head I can't shut up. This constant, horrible voice that whispersyou were never enough."
"Do you know what it's like to look in the mirror and wonder what made her better?" she asked, her voice splintering at the edges. "To scroll through her Instagram and dissect every photo? Every goddamn caption? Wondering if she's smiling because of you. If that photo was taken by your hand. If you laughed together that night. If she knows your favorite wine. If she wore that red dress foryou."
I could hear her breathing—shaky, shallow.
"She has short hair," she said bitterly. "And suddenly I'm wondering if that's what you prefer. If you ever hated how long mine gets. If when I dance, you cringe because I didn't go to college. Because I didn't chase some impressive career. Because I don't come from some rich, polished family that makes you look good at parties."
Her voice cracked, and I felt every piece of her shatter through the door.
"You made me questioneverythingabout myself. Things I never once felt insecure about. Things I wasproudof. Now I catch myself editing who I am in my own head—because ofyou."
A sob slipped through before she could stop it.
"I never used to do that. I never used to feel small. I used to love who I was. But now? Now I look at her and wonder if I was just the safer option. If you chose me because I was easy. Because I wouldn't leave first. Because I'd stay."
Her next words were barely more than a breath.
"But you left anyway."
My chest caved.
"I hate that I compare myself to her," she whispered. "Because logically—I know she's not better. She's just... different. But it doesn't stop the spiral. It doesn't stop the 3AM war in my mind where I'm tearing myself apart, wondering what made you want her more. What made me not enough."
She exhaled shakily.
"I don't want to be someone's backup plan, Aaron. I don't want to be the girl who only gets picked after the other one doesn't work out. I don't want to spend my life wondering if I was ever really your first choice... or just the one you could count on to forgive you."
I didn't move. Couldn't. Her words were landing like strikes to the chest—every syllable deliberate, every sentence cutting into bone.
"You planted insecurities in me I never had," she whispered. "Or maybe I did. Maybe they were just quiet. But now they scream. And now that I see you, I feel them rise again—loud, sharp, ugly."
"There is no safety with you, Aaron," she said, barely above a whisper. But her voice—God, her voice—was sharper than anyscream. "None. You stripped it from me. You yanked the ground out from under me and called it love."
"I'll always wonder," she went on, her eyes distant now, like she was talking to the version of me that destroyed her. "I'll always carry that fear in my chest like a ticking clock. I'll always brace for the moment you turn cold again. The second you start pulling away and I'm too in love to see it—again."
She took a shaky breath, lips trembling, her hands clenched into fists at her sides like her body was doing everything it could to hold her together.
"And I'll never know the answer to the one question that haunts me the most."
I swallowed hard, dread curling around my spine. "What question?" I asked, barely managing the words.
She looked up at me then, and I almost wished she hadn't. Her eyes were red, swollen, drowning—but there was no mercy in them. Just hurt. Just devastation. Just the final blow she was about to deliver.
"If things had worked out with Selene..." her voice cracked on the name, like it physically hurt her to say it, "would you have ever come back?"
Silence.
The kind that isn't empty, but loud. Screaming.
