The air clings to my skin, thick with heat, even though the sun hasn’t fully risen. It’s day seven—seven days of running, seven days of sand stretching forever, of silence broken only by the grind of my shoes over desert rock. My body’s wrecked: knees shaking, lips split, shoulders raw from the pack I’ve dragged across every cursed dune.

No showers, no real sleep, just tents, dust, stars and the sound of everyone breathing like it’s work. Every night, I drop like I’ve been cut from a wire, every morning, I get up and I run.

This race? It’s madness, the hardest thing I’ve ever done, harder than I thought I could survive, but I keep moving because I know you're waiting.

And now, finally, I see it—the finish line, just two poles with a sun-bleached ribbon hanging between them, barely visible in the heat haze. No crowd, no cheering, just a few volunteers and you—standing there, a few meters past the tape, like a mirage I’ve imagined so many times, I’m afraid to believe you’re real.

But then I see your face, your eyes—red, tired, maybe from tears—and I know. You’re real, you came.

My legs almost give out, but I push through the last steps, chest on fire, throat raw, everything in me burning. And then I hear you—calling my name like it matters, like it means something, like it’s always meant something—and suddenly you're there, running toward me.

You don’t care that I’m drenched in sweat, covered in dirt, probably smell like I’ve been lost in a cave. You wrap your arms around me like you’ve been waiting to breathe and I melt into you—done, spent, but more alive than I’ve been in days.

Your hand finds the back of my neck. You whisper, voice shaking, “You did it. I’ve got you now.”

And in that second, something in me breaks open. All the grit and pain, all the hunger and silence, it pours out—not in words, just in the way I lean into you and finally let go, let you hold me, let you see me.

Out here, in the middle of nowhere, with the desert behind me and your arms around me, I finally let myself feel it—not just the finish line but the fact that I made it back to you.

"I feel like jelly" I murmur breathlessly against your neck.