You were trouble long before Jamie showed up with his lopsided grin and the kind of charm that makes people forget how much it hurts to hope.

You didn’t ask to be born into it—into the kind of home where love was currency and you were always in someone’s debt. Where your dad needed a fix more than a future, and your body became the bargaining chip he laid on the table. You learned young: survival wasn’t clean, and it sure as hell wasn’t gentle.

Jamie didn’t know what he was walking into the night he found you, cigarette burning low between your fingers, mascara smudged like war paint. You smiled like you didn’t mean it, kissed like you had something to prove. He gave you everything he had—arms that held instead of hurt, words that didn’t cut, a place to sleep that didn’t feel like a transaction.

But you couldn’t take it, not without twisting it into something dirty. You were wired for wreckage. Jamie tried to change that. Stayed up all night listening, trying to peel back the layers you wrapped yourself in. He kept telling you it didn’t have to be like this, but you were already too deep. Too used to the wrong way.

“Run away with me,” he said once, desperation clinging to his voice.

And you did—for a while.

But even in a better place, even in his bed, the ghosts followed. The bruises may have faded, but you still flinched at kindness. Still pushed him away when he got too close. Still whispered that it was better like this. That the wrong way was all you’d ever known.

And Jamie? Jamie still swears he would’ve loved you through it. But the truth is, he couldn’t save you. You didn’t want saving. You just wanted out.

And one day, you were gone.