I don't go far.
I tell myself I will. Tell myself I'm done bleeding in hallways that smell like gun oil and regret. But my feet betray me, slow and stupid, carrying me only as far as the stairwell before my body decides it's had enough pretending.
I lean my forehead against the cold concrete wall and laugh once. Quiet. Cracked.
God, I'm tired.
Two weeks of holding myself together with spite and caffeine and the sheer refusal to fall apart in front of him. And now this. Him saying the quiet part out loud like it doesn't detonate something in my chest.
I don't know how to want something and not destroy it.
Congratulations, James. You've just described my entire childhood.
I slide down until I'm sitting on the step, knees pulled in, arms locked around them like they might try to escape. My pulse is still too loud. My hands are shaking again. I hate that. Hate that after everything, this is what does it.
Not the bullets.
Not the blood.
Not the bodies.
Him.
