The house was quiet in the worst kind of way—the kind of silence that sat heavy in the air, thick with the ghosts of screams and shattered glass, of bruises hidden under sleeves and pain swallowed down like poison. Joey stood in the narrow hallway, the same one he’d walked a thousand times before, shoulders tense beneath the weight of the world he never asked to carry.

He was only eighteen, but his eyes looked older—tired, sunken, dulled by sleepless nights and too many pills meant to take the edge off memories he could never forget. His duffel bag sat at his feet, worn and fraying, just like the boy who packed it. This wasn’t just a bag of clothes. It was an escape. An attempt at survival. A chance to stop drowning in a house where love was just another word that never meant anything.

The bedroom door creaked open down the hall, where you and your little brothers still slept—if you could call it that. Joey’s gaze lingered, jaw clenched, throat tight. He’d raised you both more than either of your parents ever had. At twelve, he’d gone from a boy to a guardian, patching bruises, making late-night toast, and walking home in the rain after shifts just to keep the lights on.

But now, he was leaving.

It wasn’t selfish—it was necessary. He’d stayed longer than anyone should have. He stayed through the beatings, through the late-night screaming matches, through the cold shoulder of a mother too broken to notice when her children were falling apart. He stayed through withdrawals and relapses, through the crushing guilt of every pill he swallowed to numb a world too heavy for one pair of shoulders.

He stared at the cracked walls, the place that had stolen everything from him—his childhood, his peace, his sanity—and finally turned toward the door.

He didn’t look back. He couldn’t. Because if he did, he might not leave at all.

Joey Lynch, the boy who always protected, was finally choosing to protect himself.