VOLUME II ACT II CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN – BREAKUP & PIVOT (Part Ten)

VOLUME II ACT II CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN – BREAKUP & PIVOT (Part Ten)
VOLUME II

ACT II

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN – BREAKUP & PIVOT
(Part Ten)
Alina

Leonard didn’t answer me. He just sat there, on the edge of the bed, shoulders slouched, his hands limp between his knees like he no longer knew what to do with them. His head was bowed low, and for a second, he looked like a man who had just been stripped bare of everything, dignity, hope, illusions.

The silence hurt more than if he had shouted at me. His silence was the wound.

I stood by the door, my hand already curled around the knob. My bag was slung over my shoulder, packed earlier in secret. I had rehearsed this moment in my head: I would leave quickly, surgically, with no lingering softness. If I looked back, it would undo me.

“Leonard,” I said quietly.

His head lifted just enough for me to see his eyes. They were rimmed red, wet. Not the glassy gloss of anger — but the raw shine of grief.

And still, he said nothing.
I swallowed. “This isn’t about you. It never was. You deserve better than to be used as a prop in someone else’s war.”

A humorless laugh slipped out of him, bitter and small. “A prop,” he repeated, his voice hoarse. “That’s what I was to you? After everything?”

I flinched, but I didn’t take it back. I couldn’t afford to soften the truth, because softening it would mean staying, and staying would mean unraveling everything I had clawed back from the ashes of Kieran.

“You were kind to me,” I said. “And I wanted to believe in that kindness. But kindness isn’t love. Not the kind I need.”

He leaned forward, gripping his hair with both hands, shaking his head like he was trying to wake from a nightmare. “So that’s it. You used me. You played along. And now you just…leave.”

I didn’t answer. The silence was answer enough.

His voice broke. “Alina, I love you.”

It was the first time he had said it aloud, the words spilling into the room like blood. I felt them, sharp and heavy, but they did not pierce me the way they should have. Instead, they slid down the surface of me, unable to find purchase.

I pressed my back against the door. “Then hate me tomorrow. It will be easier.”

His head snapped up, eyes narrowing. “Do you even care what you’ve done to me? What this means?”

“I do,” I whispered. And it was true. I did care. But not enough to change course. Not enough to stay.

The air in the room felt thick, suffocating. My lungs burned as though I were underwater, waiting for the final breath. I opened the door, and cool air from the hall rushed in like salvation.

He didn’t try to stop me.

He just sat there, hands clutching his hair, shoulders bent in a way that looked too heavy for someone so broad.

I stepped out.

The door closed behind me with the softest click.

And that was the end of Leonard.

I didn’t go home.

Home was too close. Too predictable. If Kieran was still watching, and I knew he was, I felt it in the crawl of my skin when I walked outside, then he would expect me to run back to my apartment, to bury myself under the safety of routine.

So instead, I walked.

The streets were dim, the lamps buzzing weakly, moths circling their light. My reflection ghosted in shop windows as I passed, each one a blurred version of myself, fractured, flickering, unmoored.

By the time I reached the bakery, the sky was bruising with early dawn. The windows glowed faintly. The smell of rising bread seeped through the cracks of the door, warm and familiar.

Rex was inside.

I didn’t need to see him to know it.

I lingered across the street, hidden in shadow. Watching.

Through the glass, I saw his outline moving, tall, steady, arms flexing as he lifted trays of dough. His motions were smooth, practiced, almost tender. Like he wasn’t just working, but caring for something fragile.

I stayed there a long time, watching him. Longer than I should have. My heart was restless, restless in the way it used to be when I followed Kieran’s silhouette at night, when I memorized his patterns, when I lived off the adrenaline of knowing him in secret.

But this was different.

Rex didn’t know I was out there. He didn’t see me, not yet. He was untouched by the games and betrayals, the bombs and counterbombs. He was clean ground.

And I, I was pivoting.

From Leonard’s heartbreak, from Kieran’s shadow, to Rex.

The idea curled inside me like a new seed, small and dangerous.

Rex would be next.

Later, when the bakery door opened, the bell above it chiming softly, Rex stepped out carrying a bag of flour over his shoulder. The morning sun broke over his face, catching in his hair, outlining him in light.

He looked up and down the street casually, not knowing I was tucked behind a lamppost, watching.

He didn’t know that my gaze followed the curve of his jaw, the veins in his forearms, the way he exhaled slowly like someone who never rushed.

He didn’t know that, in my head, I had already begun writing his name in invisible ink, sketching the shape of him into the margins of my notebooks.

He didn’t know that I had already chosen.

My pivot was complete.

When he disappeared back inside, I finally pulled myself away. My feet carried me home, quiet and unseen, though I could still feel the phantom weight of Leonard’s voice, I love you, echoing against my chest.

I ignored it.

I let it drown in the scent of flour, in the glow of bakery windows, in the shape of Rex’s shoulders.

Tomorrow, I told myself, tomorrow I will make my move.

Tonight, I only had to let go of the man I left behind.

And dream of the one ahead.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN