The first sign that something had changed came in silence. Not the kind born of comfort—but of avoidance.
River had been distant for days, phone calls unanswered, eyes flicking to the door too often. Lila noticed it in the little things: the way he stayed out late under the guise of photoshoots, the way his hand hesitated before reaching for hers.
She didn't want to ask. Didn't want to name the ache growing inside her. But denial doesn't quiet truth—it only delays it.
On a rainy Thursday evening, she came home to find the apartment dimly lit and empty. A single envelope sat on the dining table, her name written in his hand.
No.
Her breath caught. Hands trembling, she tore it open.
> Lila,
I've been trying to find the right words, and maybe that's the problem—I've been trying to make this clean when it's anything but.
I'm leaving. Not because I want to hurt you, but because I need to figure out who I am when I'm not standing in your light.
You made me whole. But somewhere along the way, I stopped knowing who I was outside of you. I thought Paris had fixed that, but it didn't. I'm still searching.
This isn't goodbye forever. But it's goodbye for now. I owe it to both of us to come back whole.
Please don't hate me. Please don't stop writing.
Yours, always,
River
Lila sank into the chair. Rain pelted the windows. Her chest tightened, her world cracking at the seams.
He was gone.
No explanation beyond the letter. No final kiss, no tears shared. Just words on a page.
For the first time in months, the apartment felt cold. Hollow. Every photo on the wall mocked her. Every poem in the book now felt like a memory too fragile to touch.
The next morning, she woke late, eyes swollen. Her phone buzzed with messages, invitations, contracts. But she ignored them all.
She spent the day walking the city, her feet tracing the places they'd made their own. The bench in the park. The bookstore café. The alley lit with fairy lights.
At sunset, she sat beneath the cherry blossom lights strung near the rooftop where it all began.
She didn't cry.
Instead, she pulled out her journal. And for the first time since he left, she wrote.
> "He loved me with the kind of fire that warms but never stays. I was a season. A soft landing. But I am not a placeholder. I am the story. And I will keep writing."
The city buzzed below her, alive and aching. And though her heart felt carved open, she knew this wasn't the end.
It was another beginning.
A beginning without him. A beginning for her.