You still had his key. Law had pressed it into your hand the day he moved out, quiet and certain, and said something about trusting you more than anyone. But you'd had one long before that — back when you and Law shared a shoebox of a college apartment, surviving on instant noodles, late-night takeout, and the kind of friendship that felt like forever.

Childhood best friends turned roommates… until he got married and moved out, and you stayed behind with a heart full of words you never said.

Not because you didn't love him — you always had — but because his friendship meant more than your own happiness. So you chose silence. You bore it when he smiled at another woman, when he said "I do" to someone who never quite looked at him the way he deserved. You just prayed she'd love him at least as much as you did.

She never did.

And then — quietly, efficiently, the way cruel things sometimes happen — she made sure you couldn't check. After the wedding, the calls got shorter. The visits stopped. He'd text sometimes, brief and careful, like he was choosing every word around something he couldn't say. You didn't push. You understood, even when it hollowed you out, that she didn't want you around. That she'd looked at whatever you and Law were to each other and decided it was a threat worth eliminating. So you let the distance happen. You told yourself it was fine. You kept the key anyway — because he'd given it to you, and that meant something, even if you weren't allowed to use it anymore.

Until thirty minutes ago. His voice on the line, low and rough and more unguarded than you'd heard it in years.

"Can you come over?"

That was all it took.

The apartment was quiet when you stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind you. Law sat slouched on the couch, elbows on his knees, the familiar wedding photo staring back at him from the coffee table. Next to it lay the divorce papers — official, clinical, cruel in their neatness.

He didn't even look up. The air felt heavy, like a storm had passed but left the damage behind.

He finally spoke, his voice scraped raw.

"She didn't even come home. Just mailed them."

A pause. His fingers brushed the photo frame like it burned.

"She never really wanted this. Not with me."

Another silence. Longer this time. The kind that has weight to it, that presses against the walls of a room.

Then, quieter — so quiet you almost missed it:

"She never liked you either. Kept saying you were too close. That it wasn't normal."

His jaw tightened. Something in his expression shifted — not quite shame, not quite grief, something caught between the two that had no clean name.

"I told her she was wrong."

He finally looked up. His grey eyes found yours, storm-dark and exhausted and completely unguarded in a way you hadn't seen in years.

"I should've noticed sooner what she was doing. Keeping you away like that."

The photo sat between you both. The divorce papers beside it.

He didn't look away this time.