Page 167 of When the Storm Breaks
Haiyden
It’s been five months and twelve days since she left. I know it before I even open my eyes. I’ve been counting—each day another brick stacked onto a wall I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to climb down from. But today, I don’t have it in me to add another. I just… can’t.
So I keep my eyes closed. I reach for my phone instead, my hand sweeping across my sheets until I find it. Cold. Familiar. I curl my fingers around it and exhale.
She changed her number when she left.
I tried calling—again and again—like an idiot, like I could somehow reach her through the sheer force of wanting. But the calls don’t go through. They haven’t for months.
Still, I hit the button every now and then.
Knowing it’s useless. Knowing no one’s on the other end.
I do it anyway, though. Some twisted ritual. A guilty habit. A last-ditch fantasy that maybe, just once, her voice will come through the static.
Like none of it ever happened. Like she never really left.
But I know that day isn’t today.
I finally open my eyes and stretch, reaching toward the small body curled beside me. I breathe into her messy hair and wrap around her, knowing it won’t be enough.
She sighs, shifting a little, and I let her go.
I stand, pull a shirt from the dresser, and slide it on. When I glance back at the bed, she’s still in her usual spot.
I huff. “Come on, Margot. We have to get up.”
The blankets rustle. Slowly, my tiny but mighty terrier peeks out, giving me a half-lidded stare like she’s questioning my entire existence. A mirror of me not that long ago—sluggish, unimpressed. Sleepy, with an attitude.
I grab a pair of socks and sit down beside her, tugging them on. The second I finish, her tail starts wagging like I’ve finally passed some unspoken test.
She crawls into my lap and curls up tight, like this is what she’s been waiting for all along.
I run a hand over her head and let my mind wander. Backward.
Like it always does.
The first few weeks after Calla left were dark.
Darker than dark.
I started losing control again—of everything, everyone, including myself. I drank. Stopped going to work. Locked myself in my room and let myself rot.
I deserved it.
It was my punishment.
Chase tried checking on me, but I kept the door locked, answering with nothing more than a grunt or a low moan—just enough to let himknow I was still alive.
But I wasn’t. Not in any way that counted.
I don’t even remember the last time I spoke out loud.
Maybe it was the day I realized she was gone—when I showed up at her apartment and saw yesterday’s coffee, yesterday’s pastry, yesterday’s butterfly.
When I screamed her name through the door, begging her to open up.
That was it. That was the last thing I said: her name, wrapped in panic.
