𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 ~ | 𝘔𝘢𝘹 𝘝𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯

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~'~

Max

The day before

It started, as it always did these days, with her.

Sabrina.

There was something about her presence that unsettled me in a way I couldn't quite understand, something sharp and raw, like the edges of an old wound refusing to heal. When she was near, the world felt different, like it had shifted slightly out of focus and was sharper all at once.

And then there was the quiet.

I wasn't used to it, the calm that came whenever she stood too close or glanced at me in that guarded, calculating way of hers. It wasn't peaceful, not exactly, it felt like the eye of a storm, all the more dangerous because I couldn't see where it ended.

When she walked away from me, always with a look that said she regretted every second she'd spent near me, I should have felt relief. Instead, I was left with a hollowness I couldn't explain, as though she'd taken something vital with her.

Like it was her.

It was intoxicating and infuriating. She was everything I never allowed myself to want, defiant, brilliant, unshakable. And when she looked at me like I was something more than what the rest of the world saw, something more than just... me... it made the ground tilt beneath my feet.

I wasn't sure what scared me more: the way my heart sped up when she was close, or the fact that, for the first time in years, I didn't want it to stop.

No, it was subtler than that. It was how the air changed when she walked into a room, like every molecule rearranged itself to make space for her, whether you wanted it to or not. It was the way she managed to simultaneously infuriate me and make me feel more alive than I ever had before.

When she was near, something shifted in me. I didn't know what it was, and I wasn't sure I wanted to name it. All I knew was that when she leaned too close, her voice low and mocking, I felt a pull in my chest like gravity itself had been rewritten.

I should've hated her. She was my enemy. She was everything I couldn't stand wrapped in one frustrating, captivating person. But she wasn't a villain in my story, not anymore.

And that realization, that subtle betrayal of my own emotions, made everything else seem just... off. Including this.

I shook the thoughts from my head as I approached the door to the apartment. It was a nice, large place, too big in a way that felt suffocating on days like this. But it was home. Or at least, it was supposed to be.

The apartment felt cold the moment I stepped inside. Not the kind of cold that crept through open windows or rattled past thin walls. It was an emptiness, a chill that lived in the spaces between furniture, in the muted colors of silence.

"I'm home." I called, but I clearly did not deserve a reply.

Kelly was at the table, the remnants of her dinner pushed to the side like an afterthought.

"You already ate?" I asked, the words scraping against my throat like they didn't belong to me.

She didn't look up. "I didn't know when you'd get home."

My stomach turned, not at the words, but at her voice. Detached. Removed. Like she was answering a question she barely heard.

"She's asleep?" I asked, shrugging out of my jacket and hanging it by the door.