Destiny's POV
Red stopped coming to the house.
At first, I felt relieved, like I could finally breathe without the weight of his presence pressing on my chest. The knocks on the door, the sound of his voice calling my name... they were gone. And in their place, silence returned. The kind of silence I had asked for. Fought for.
But even as I sat with that quiet, I couldn't deny the ache that lingered just beneath it. A subtle, dull disappointment that curled up in my chest when I realized he had finally listened. He had stopped trying.
And wasn't that what I wanted?
Peace. Distance. A clean break.
I kept repeating those words like a mantra. But every time my phone buzzed with a new message—every time his name flashed across my screen—I froze. My fingers hovered over the screen, tempted to open it, to see if he was still saying the same things, or if something in him had changed.
But I never let myself get that far.
