“Whether you want the truth,” he said, “or whether you want to believe everything can go back to the way it was.”
The question didn’t come with pressure, or urgency, but it carried something heavier than both, something that demanded honesty from me.
I thought about my house, the walls I built, the memories in every corner, the life I thought I still had just hours ago.
I thought about Carolina, the way she looked at me when she threw that bag, something in her eyes I had chosen not to understand.
And I thought about the road back, the simplicity of pretending none of this was real, of choosing the version of events that hurt less.
My fingers tightened slightly around the phone, and for a moment, time didn’t move the way it was supposed to.
The sound of my breathing grew louder in my ears, each inhale slower than the last, each exhale carrying something I couldn’t name.
Mateo didn’t interrupt, didn’t rush me, just sat there, letting the weight of the choice settle fully before I reached for it.
Outside, somewhere in the distance, a siren passed, fading quickly, leaving behind a silence that felt even more complete than before.
I looked down at the phone again, then back at the note on the table, the words that had brought me here in the first place.
There was no version of this where I could keep everything, no path that didn’t require losing something I wasn’t ready to let go of.
But there was a difference between losing something by accident, and choosing what to lose before it was taken from me.
I took a slow breath, feeling the decision forming, not all at once, but piece by piece, like something being rebuilt from the inside out.
And then, without looking at Mateo, I pressed the button on the phone.
The call connected almost immediately, but no one spoke on the other end, only a faint sound of breathing that felt strangely familiar.
I didn’t say anything either, not yet, because somehow silence felt safer than saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Then I heard it, soft, fragile, like it had been held back for too long.
“Dad?” Carolina’s voice broke through, barely above a whisper, but it carried more weight than anything else that had happened.
My chest tightened, not from anger anymore, but from something deeper, something that had been building quietly since I left the house.
“I’m here,” I said, my voice steadier than I expected, though my hands were still trembling slightly around the phone.
There was a pause, longer than comfortable, filled with everything we hadn’t said to each other the night before.
