Chapter 7: The Architecture of My Soul
I sat beside her on the cold hospital bench.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
Doctors passed.
Nurses moved between rooms.
Life and fear carried on around us as if my world had not just collapsed.
Emma kept her eyes on the floor.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Feel guilty.”
I let out a breath that almost became a laugh.
“Emma.”
“I mean it,” she whispered. “We were already over.”
That sentence should have been simple.
Legal.
True.
But it felt wrong in every place that mattered.
I had traded a life of shared burdens for a life of quiet rooms.
I had walked away from the only person who truly knew the architecture of my soul.
The cracks.
The hidden rooms.
The parts I kept locked because I was afraid even love would not survive seeing them.
And somehow, Emma had loved me anyway. Continue Reading ⬇️