“You need to know,” Jace said quietly. His voice cracked like glass under weight. “Because if I don’t say it now, I never will.”
Ava nodded once.
“When I was fourteen,” he said, “I came home from school early. My mom was supposed to be at work. The house was too quiet.” His eyes didn’t meet hers. “I found her in the bathroom. On the floor.”
Ava’s heart stuttered while Jace swallowed hard.
“She wasn’t dead. But she wanted to be.” He blinked, once, slow. “She didn’t look at me. She didn’t say my name. She just kept saying, ‘I couldn’t take it anymore.’”
His voice dropped. “And I didn’t tell anyone. Not one person. Not then. Not ever.”
Ava’s breath caught feeling how the air around them thickened.
“I cleaned it up,” he said. “I lied to my dad. I told everyone she slipped in the shower. She spent the night in bed, shaking. And I just… I just sat there. Next to her door. Listening to see if she stopped breathing.” He looked up. “No one ever knew.”
Ava didn’t realize her hands had curled into fists.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper but Jace just shook his head at first.
“Because I didn’t want to be the reason someone took her away. I didn’t want to lose what was left.” His throat bobbed. “But something broke in me that day. Something permanent.”
He ran a hand through his hair, pacing a step to the side.
“I stopped trusting the quiet. I stopped trusting kindness. And I needed something to punch. Something to hate.” He looked her dead in the eye. “I needed to hurt someone. Anyone. And you were the only person kind enough to still show up.”
His voice cracked at the last words. “So I picked you. Because I knew you’d take it.”
Ava’s chest twisted. It landed like a confession and a gut punch all at once. Not because she didn’t understand. But because she did.
She had always wondered why her pain never made him flinch. Why her tears seemed invisible to him. And now she knew—he hadn’t seen her pain. He’d only seen himself in it. His damage. His panic. His guilt. Ava’s breath trembled as she stared at him.
“You chose me,” she said slowly, “because I was too kind to walk away?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Because you kept coming back. Even when I didn’t deserve it.”
She stepped forward now, only one step. “So you turned me into your proof that you could survive hating someone… without losing everything.”
Jace’s eyes filled. “I didn’t mean to ruin you.”
“But you did,” she said. “You chipped away at me until I didn’t know who I was.” He didn’t deny it so she added, softer then, “And you were already chipping away at yourself.”
“I don’t want pity,” he said. “This isn’t about that.”
“I know,” she replied. “And this isn’t forgiveness.”
He looked down. “I wouldn’t ask for it.”
“But you needed me to know.”
“Yes.” They stood there, surrounded by the flickering echoes of their past—lockers behind them, stairs below, time warping faintly at the edges.
Ava stepped forward once more, close enough now to see the dried blood near his lip. “What happened to your face?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated. “I punched a wall.”
“You should’ve punched the past.”
He half-smiled at this one, tired and hollow. “I did. It just punched back.”
Her eyes softened when she reached for him—fingers trembling, heart on fire—and kissed him. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that fixed things.
Their mouths crashed like two stories finally meeting in the middle, unsure whether to fuse or explode. Jace didn’t resist. He met her there, broken and open and raw. It only lasted a few seconds.
But it was enough to burn. Enough to bleed. Enough to mean something that didn’t have a name yet.
When Ava pulled back, her breath was shaking, but her spine held strong. She looked into his stunned face—eyes wide, chest heaving—and said exactly what needed to be said.
“This can’t end like this. But it can’t stay like this either.”