Page 96 of Faded Touches

Its noise, its movement, its endless tide of strangers pressed against me until I could barely breathe. I moved through it like a ghost, my suitcase dragging behind me, my chest hollow, my throat raw from all the words I hadn’t spoken. Every face blurred, every voice dulled, because the only one I could still hear was his.

Hayden.

His voice clung to me, rough and desperate, breaking apart at the edges. The sound of him begging me to stay echoed in my head until I couldn’t tell if it was memory or madness. I could still hear the rasp of his breath, the crack in his tone when he said my name, as if the sound alone might hold me there. And still, I had walked away.

Tears blurred my eyes, spilling unchecked down my cheeks as I pressed forward, head down, ignoring the curious stares that followed. My body shook, not from cold but from the weight of everything I was leaving behind. My love for him was still there, burning through the wreckage, alive and merciless, and that was the cruelest truth of all. I wasn’t leaving because I didn’t love him. I was leaving because I did.

The boarding announcement rang through the terminal, sharp and final.

My chest constricted. My legs moved, heavy and reluctant, dragging me toward the gate as though pulled by some invisible thread I didn’t have the strength to cut.

And then it struck.

The pain came without warning, sharp and brutal, tearing through my abdomen so violently I gasped. My knees buckled, my hand flew to my side, and the air ripped from my lungs ina broken cry. Sweat gathered on my forehead, sliding down my temples, cold against the heat radiating from my skin.

I staggered, clutching at nothing, my vision swimming. The world tilted violently, voices rising in alarm somewhere far away, distant and muffled, as though I were already falling out of it. My suitcase slipped from my hand, crashing against the tile, and then my knees followed, hard and graceless.

I tried to stand. I tried to breathe. I tried to make my body obey me, but everything betrayed me, every nerve and muscle surrendering beneath the weight of exhaustion and pain.

“Hayden…” His name escaped me in a whisper, cracked and trembling, not a word but a plea.

The lights above blurred, halos of white bleeding into gold before dimming to nothing. The last thing I felt was the sting of tears cooling against my cheeks as the darkness closed in.