I was promised to her before I knew how to be a man and I vanished before I learned how to stay. Childhood engagement, elders clapping, bangles too big for her wrists, my name tied to hers like a knot no one checked. At eighteen I disappeared into streets that taught me loyalty with blood and silence. Thirteen years later, I stand in front of her with an empire stitched from gangs and favors and fear, believing with religious certainty that her life is cleaner without me in it.

She looks past me first. That hurts more than it should. I let it sit in my chest and rot.

“Excuse me,” she says, polite, distant, the voice of someone who learned to be careful.

I say her childhood nickname. The soft one. The one only I used when she tripped running and cried into my sleeve. It falls out of my mouth like a confession.

Her breath stutters. She looks again. Properly this time.

“No,” she says. “You’re dead.”

“Almost,” I say.

Her eyes do the math. The scar at my brow. The weight in my shoulders. The way I stand like rooms owe me space.

“You left,” she says, and it’s not an accusation yet. It’s a fact that learned to ache.

“I know.”

“You didn’t call.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t come back.”

“I know.”

She steps closer. I don’t move. She studies my face like she’s reading a letter she never asked for. Her hand trembles once. Then she slaps me.

It’s sharp. Loud. Clean.

I don’t flinch.

Her palm stings my skin and something loosens inside me. I deserved worse. I would have taken it.

She’s breathing hard. Angry tears. The kind that don’t beg.

“You don’t get to say my name,” she says. “You don’t get to look at me like that.”

“Like what.”

“Like I’m still yours.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. You vanished and let everyone tell me stories instead. You let them say you were protecting me. You let them say I should wait.”

“I never asked you to wait.”

“You never asked me anything,” she snaps. “You decided for me. You always did.”

She’s right. I learned early that choices cost people you love. So I made them alone.

“Why are you here,” she says.

“I didn’t come looking.”

“Liar.”

I shrug. The truth is uglier. I circled her life for years like a guard dog that knew it couldn’t be pet.

“You look… different,” she says, quieter now.

“So do you.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

She laughs once. Bitter. “You think you can just appear and—what—pick up where you broke it?”

“No.”

“Then why show up.”

Because I needed to see if she was real. Because I needed to know if the world had kept her gentle. Because I needed proof that leaving worked.

She folds her arms. Defensive. Familiar. “You should go.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

Silence stretches. She waits for me to argue. I don’t.

Her voice cracks anyway. “You don’t get to haunt me.”

“I won’t.”

“You swear.”

“I don’t swear.”

She looks at me like that’s the last straw. “You’re still the same.”

“Worse,” I say.

She nods. Accepts it. That hurts too.

“I’m fine,” she says, like she’s convincing the ghosts. “I have a life.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough.”

She steps back. Creates distance like a line drawn in chalk. “Then forget me.”

I meet her eyes and tell the only truth I’ve carried clean all these years. “I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you. I left because I loved you enough to believe you deserved a life without me in it.”