Page 121 of The Wreckage Of Us

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“Brittany, it’s me,” I called, voice raw. “Please. Please, baby, just talk to me.”

I waited.

The world waited.

No answer.

I slid down to the ground, knees to my chest, forehead resting on my arms.

That’s where Sylvia found me again.

“Ace,” she murmured, crouching beside me. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“I don’t know how to stop.”

She touched my shoulder, her voice kind but firm. “You need to go home.”

I let out a strangled laugh. “Home? Where the hell is that, Sylvia? She was my home.”

For a moment, her face softened, and I thought—just for a moment—she might open the door, let me inside, let me see her.

But she only squeezed my shoulder and whispered, “Go home, Ace,” before slipping back inside.

The door clicked shut.

The darkness swallowed me whole.

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I began drifting through my days like a man half-alive.

I showed up to work, barely functional, colleagues throwing me worried glances I brushed off with tight smiles. I went to meetings I didn’t remember, sat at dinner tables I couldn’t taste, lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling, trying to remember the sound of her laugh.

And everywhere I went, I saw her.

At the store, a flash of her hair in the next aisle.

On the street, the shape of her shoulders in the crowd.

At the café, the scent of her perfume lingering long after she was gone.

And every time, my chest would tighten, my hand flying unconsciously to rub at the ache, fingers pressing into skin that never stopped hurting.

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One night, weeks after I’d last seen her up close, I found myself standing outside her building again.

I didn’t knock this time.

I just stood there, hands in my pockets, staring up at her window like a man waiting for a miracle.

Behind me, the city moved—cars passing, voices drifting, laughter spilling from a nearby bar. But none of it touched me.

All I could think was: I’m running out of time.

I was getting old. Too old for the way she glowed, the way she was stepping into her prime, the way she was reclaiming her life. She was twenty-eight, shining and unbreakable, and I was the wreckage she had crawled free from.

And still, I couldn’t let go.

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