The Price of Staying

VANCE’S POV

My jaw locks so tight something in my temple pops and my eyes burn with a heat that has nowhere to go because I haven’t cried since I was a child in this hallway and I’m not going to start now.

I’m NOT, I refuse to give this house the satisfaction of—

Choose to stay.

She couldn’t. She wrote the words and she couldn’t follow them.

She told me to stay whole and she broke herself instead,