The dorm room was suffocating, the air thick with tension. You could almost hear the pulse of your heartbeat, loud enough to drown out everything else. Lip sat on the floor, back to the bed, staring at the space.

“You don’t even see it, do you?” you snapped, voice sharp, tight with frustration. “You’re so damn caught up in your own shit that you can’t see how far you’ve fallen.”

Lip’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t look at you. “I don’t need this right now. Please, just drop it.”

But you couldn’t. Not now, not after everything you’d been through. “No, Lip. I’ve been dropping it for years, and look where that’s gotten us,now you’re dragging me down with you.”

The words hung in the air like smoke, thick and choking. You could tell it hit harder than anything you’d said before.

“I never meant to—” he muttered, voice low, like he thought that would somehow make it better.

“That’s the problem!” you shot back, fury flooding your chest. “You never mean to, but I’m always the one left trying to pick up the pieces. I’m done being your damn bandaid, Lip. I’m fucking tired of it.”

For the first time, his eyes met yours. Red-rimmed, haunted, like he’d been holding on to something that was already breaking. “You’re the only thing that’s ever kept me from falling apart,” he said, voice raw. “If I lose you—”

“Then stop pushing me away,” you interrupted, your voice cracking with the weight of it all.

The silence that followed was thick, heavy, like a pressure pressing on your chest. You could feel the distance between you growing, not with the physical space, but something deeper—something that neither of you had the courage to face.

“Maybe we’re not those kids anymore,” you whispered, voice barely above a breath. “Maybe we grew up into people who can’t fix each other anymore.”

His hands shook as he clenched them tighter, his whole body vibrating with the words that he couldn’t say. “I don’t know how to live without you.”

“Then figure it out,” you said, your heart breaking with every syllable. “Or let me go.”