Page 138 of My Only

I needed a moment. To think.

To process.

To figure out how the hell I was supposed to fix something that never should’ve been broken in the first place.

Ayla told me. She told me, and I told her she had nothing to worry about.

She trusted me.

And I let her down.

Upstairs in the master bedroom, I changed into my basketball shorts, heart still hammering.

My chest was tight. My muscles tense.

There was no way I was sleeping like this.

So I took the stairs back down.

Kept going.

Straight to the basement.

Ayla and I had turned it into a half-library, half-gym.

She had her books.

I had the treadmill, the stationary bike, the step machine.

I went straight for the treadmill.

Jumped on.

No warmup. No stretch.

Just ran.

Fast. Hard.

Like I could outrun the rage choking me from the inside out.

Like I could leave behind the self-loathing scraping my ribs raw.

Like I could erase the mistakes.

But the mistakes ran faster.

I was a solid twenty minutes in when I realized I wasn’t breathing at tempo.

I wasn’t just sweating.

I was burning.

Inside. Out.

Harper lied.

She played me.

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