Page 113 of Beneath His Robes

He was gone.

And I was left with nothing but the hollow echo of his absence.

The car ride felt endless. I watched the streets blur past me, the city moving like a silent film. But it was all muted, distant. The weight of it—losing him—was unbearable, yet somehow, I had to bear it.

When the car pulled up to the apartment, I didn’t get out right away. I just sat there for a long time, staring at the door. I wanted to believe I could go inside and somehow find a piece of Elias in there, something that would make him real again. I’d never thought this would happen—never thought I’d be standing here, having to face the reality that the one person who truly understood me was gone.

I couldn’t accept it. I needed more time. I needed to thank him for staying when everything felt like it was falling apart.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them back. I couldn’t let myself succumb to the despair, not yet. Not when the world felt like it was crumbling around me.

I didn’t know how long I sat there, but eventually, I opened the door, stepped out of the car, and walked up to the apartment. Every step felt like I was walking into a memory I couldn’t escape. I barely recognized Travis’s silhouette, but in my heart, I was alone.

I stood in the doorway for a moment, gripping the frame, the weight of the space around me pressing in. It felt so empty. The silence in here was suffocating, too heavy to breathe through.

Elias’s laughter had once filled this place. His moans, his love. His scent lingered on the pillow where he had slept beside me the one fucking time I was able to hold him in my arms. A pair of his shoes were kicked off haphazardly by the door.

His presence lingered in every corner. All the memories stationed at every crevice of these rooms felt suffocating.

But now there was nothing. Nothing but the reminder that he was never coming back.

I walked into the living room, my legs shaky, and stood in the middle of it, looking around. I wanted to feel him, to believe that he wasn’t really gone, that somehow he was still a part of me. But the truth was undeniable.

The reality hit me like a punch to the gut.

Elias was gone. And no matter how many times I closed my eyes and wished for him to be standing next to me, his warm smile lighting up the room, he would never be there again.

I sank onto the couch, feeling the world’s weight pressing down on me. I couldn’t stop shaking. Travis stood in the doorway, giving me the space I needed at that moment. I couldn’t stop the tears that finally came falling down my face as I whispered his name in the silence of the apartment.

“Elias…I’m so sorry.”

But of course, there was no answer.

I sat there for what felt like hours, the empty apartment echoing with a quiet that pressed down on me, heavier than the weight of my grief. The pain in my chest had been building for months, but now that I was here, in the place where we’d once been so alive together, it felt like the entire world had collapsed around my shattered heart.

The tears wouldn’t stop, though I hated the weakness they represented. I didn’t want to be this person, the one who was falling apart in the silence of an apartment, the one who couldn’t fix things.

But it hurt so damn much.

And no matter how hard I tried to keep it together, I couldn’t.

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to gather myself and make sense of the mess I felt inside. Every corner of this place reminded me of him—his touch on the walls, his laugh that had once bounced off the windows, his presence in everything I did.

I picked up a framed photo from the side table. It was a picture of us, Elias and me, taken one of the last nights we’d spent together before everything spiraled. We were laughing, wrapped in each other’s arms, completely unaware of how fleeting that moment would be.

My fingers traced the edges of the frame, and I exhaled slowly, fighting the lump in my throat.

I should’ve done more.

I should have tried harder. Should’ve called for help, should have demanded Jack call a damn ambulance. I had options I didn’t know back then, so many ways I could have saved him, but I never found them when it mattered. Just like the hammer lost in the fire and smoke, they were lost…and now it was too late.

A bitter chuckle escaped my lips, but it was hollow, broken. I set the photo down carefully and stood up. The apartment felt suffocating like it was closing in around me. My legs carried me aimlessly toward the kitchen, but I couldn’t even bring myself to make a cup of coffee. Everything felt pointless now.

I opened the fridge, staring at the contents, but it was all just…background noise. Nothing mattered anymore. Everything felt like a blur as if I was moving through a world that no longer made sense.

My eyes landed on the damn bowls that Elias and I had shared pasta in one night, sitting in the back of the cabinet like some sort of forgotten promise.

I closed the door quickly, shaking my head. Instead, I opened the fridge and found a bottle of whiskey.

---