Page 18 of Dear Owen

He wasn’t here. He wouldn’t be here until tonight – hours from now.

I thought I could endure the weekend—thought I could let the silence swallow me whole until he came back. But it wasn’t just the silence that suffocated me. It washim.Even when he wasn’t here, he was everywhere.

His voice, his touch, hissmell. The way he looked at me, like I was something fragile and precious, when I knew he was the one who’d broken me in the first place.

I’d loved him before. Before all of this. Before I understood what he was. And now? I didn’t know what was worse—the fact that he’d done this to me or the fact that I still loved him somewhere deep down, where I couldn’t reach to tear it out.

What does that say about you, Kira?

The voice in my head was cruel and sharp, slashing at the edges of my mind until I couldn’t escape it anymore.

Pathetic.

Weak.

No one will save you. You don’t deserve to be saved.

I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight, every inhale a struggle, every exhale like giving up.

I don’t know when I stood up. I don’t know how long I wandered the room, barefoot, my hands trailing over the dusty furniture scattered across the basement. The remnants of what used to be a science lab surrounded me—desks with half-carved initials, shelves still holding forgotten tools and equipment, all coated in a fine layer of grime. Forgotten. Just like me.

My gaze landed on the shelf in the far corner. Glass.

I moved before I could stop myself, as if pulled by invisible strings. My fingers closed around a thick piece of lab equipment—a glass beaker left behind. The weight of it felt solid in my hand, heavy and cold. I stared at it for a long moment, the world narrowing to just this one thing.

The glass would shatter. It would cut.

It would end this.

I clenched my jaw, my breaths ragged as I lifted the beaker. It wasn’t hard to smash it—the moment it hit the concrete floor, it shattered into sharp, glittering pieces that scattered at my feet like fractured stars.

My heart pounded in my chest, but for the first time in days, I felt calm. My hands trembled as I knelt on the floor, carefully sifting through the broken glass until I found a shard long and jagged enough to fit in my palm. The edges glinted under the light, red-rimmed where I’d already nicked my thumb.

I stared at it for what felt like forever, my fingers curling around the shard.Is this what it feels like to finally decide?To stop fighting. To stop holding on to something that wasn’t even there anymore.

I wanted to be gone before he came back.

I didn’t want to see his face. Didn’t want him to find me and hold me like he did, whispering lies about how I was safe with him. Because I wasn’t safe—I’d never been safe.

But he kept you alive, didn’t he?

The thought hit me like a slap. I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head hard enough to make the room spin. He didn’t save me. Hestoleme.

I opened my eyes again, glaring down at the shard as if it could argue with me. My pulse roared in my ears, drowning out every other sound.

Just do it.

I lifted the glass to my wrist, the edge biting into the soft skin there, trembling. I held my breath, my vision blurring as the tears came back, hot and sudden.

Do it. Do it now.

The door slammed open.

The sound ripped through the silence like a gunshot, and my body jolted, the shard slipping from my fingers and clattering to the floor. I froze, my blood running cold as I turned toward the door, my breath hitching.

Owen stood in the doorway.

His shoulders rose and fell with every breath, his hoodie damp from the rain outside. His eyes locked on me—first on my wrist, then on the broken glass scattered around me—and in that moment, I swore time stopped.

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