Chapter 3
Morning comes in quietly, but it doesn’t soften anything.
Not the ache in my shoulders.
Not the cold in my chest.
And definitely not the sight of the empty space beside me—again.
Three nights.
Three nights of staring at that untouched pillow, the sheets still perfectly folded where his body should’ve left a crease.
My phone glows on the nightstand: 5:17 a.m.
Too early for anyone sane.
Too late for me, because I never really slept.
I’ve been drifting in and out of half-dreams, half-nightmares—Owen’s voice echoing in all of them, but never in the room I needed him to be in.
He promised he’d be home.
He promised last week.
He promised three months ago.
Promises that sounded so genuine I almost believed him every time.
Almost.
The apartment is too quiet.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that hums with tension, like the silence that falls after someone slams a door they don’t intend to reopen.
I stare at the ceiling and let the truth settle in, heavy and unavoidable:
He didn’t forget.
He chose not to come back.
And yet—because heartbreak makes you pathetic—I still reach for my phone.
Still unlock it.
Still check for a message that isn’t there.
Nothing.
Not even a halfhearted apology.
Just an old text from yesterday:
Be late tonight. Don’t wait up.
But I did.
I always do.
The air in the room feels colder without him, as if the heater only works when he’s here—like even the apartment knows when a promise has been broken.
Somewhere in the building, a door closes.
Footsteps echo down the hallway.
For a stupid, humiliating second, I think it might be him.
Like he’ll walk in, smelling like cologne and expensive regret, and say my name in that careful way he uses when he knows he’s messed up.
But the footsteps fade.
And so does the hope.
I pull the sheets closer, but warmth doesn’t come.
All I feel is the shape of the absence he left behind—sharp, cold, deliberate.
A wound disguised as a choice.
Three nights.
Three empty spaces where he should’ve been.
Three reminders that the man who once asked me to marry him in the soft glow of string lights…
is the same man who now leaves me alone with nothing but excuses and silence.
And for the first time since he slipped the ring on my finger, a thought whispers at the edge of my mind—small, quiet, terrifying:
What if he’s not coming back at all?