Erik jogs to the overpass, his lungs are burning.

You texted only five words. “Can you meet me? Please.” The kind of please that makes the world tilt.

He finds you there, hood pulled up, staring at the empty highway like you’re waiting for it to answer a question you never say out loud.

He steps closer. “You okay?”

You laugh—quiet, bitter. “You always ask that like you expect me to say yes.”

He wants to touch your shoulder, but stops himself halfway. He’s crossed too many lines trying to save people who never asked. So instead he shoves his hands into his pockets and swallow everything unsaid. “Then tell me the truth,” he says. “Just once.”

You don’t look at me. “You’re leaving anyway.”

His stomach drops. “…Who told you that?”

“No one had to.” You turn to him, eyes shining under the streetlight, and suddenly he hates every second he didn’t spend telling you the things he should’ve. “You’ve been packing your silence for weeks.”

You’re right. He didn’t notice you noticing.

“I’m not leaving you,” he says. “I’m just—”

“Running,” you whisper.

The word cuts sharper than anything else tonight, because it’s true. He’d always run. From cities. From problems. From himself.

But never from you.

He steps beside you, leaning on the cold railing. “Look… I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to stay somewhere without ruining it.”

Then your breath hitches. Not from anger — from hurt. A kind of quiet hurt that makes people collapse in slow, invisible ways. “You could’ve said that,” you whisper. “Instead of pretending I wouldn’t feel it.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

—“You already are.”

The silence that follows is the kind you don’t come back from. Not because it’s loud, but because it’s honest. You finally step away from the overpass railing, brushing past him. Not roughly. Not dramatically. Just… heartbreakingly gentle.