Page 57 of Without a Trace

---

Loving her felt like dying and being reborn all at once.

And back then, I wasn’t ready to die for her.

That’s what no one ever understood.

I didn’t leave because I didn’t care.

I left because Idid.

Because she was everything I couldn’t have without becoming someone I didn’t know how to be.

Because if I let her in—really let her in—she’d see it all.

The blood.

The wreckage.

The part of me that doesn’t know how to stop breaking things it loves.

And tonight? She looked at me like she still wanted it anyway. Like maybe she still wantedme.

Even after everything.

I almost gave in.

Iwantedto.

But I can’t lose her again. Not like that.

Not like this.

I’d rather walk out half-alive than stay and destroy the one thing that’s ever made me feel like maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t too far gone.

Interlude

The trees bent toward me like they remembered something I didn’t. They whispered with their limbs, not in words, but in warning.

A mirror hung in the clearing—cracked, silver bleeding red light from its center.

Behind me, three shadows waited. One held a lighter. One dripped blood. The last one—he whispered my name.

I didn’t turn around.

The ground pulsed under my bare feet. Like a heartbeat. Like something ancient had been buried there, and it was waking up just because I’d come too close.

There was a door ahead. I was younger then. Small. I’d seen it before. In memories I hadn’t made. Flashes I couldn’t place. In a house I never lived in.

My father’s voice was behind it. Not angry. Not soft. Just... waiting.

He said my name like it wasn’t mine yet. Like it would mean something different when I opened the door.

And then he said it. “Choose.”

The mirror shattered.

The trees screamed.

And I woke up—gasping—with the taste of ash in my mouth, and something cold gripping my wrist like a memory I hadn’t made.

---