Fight or Fall

22

The next morning, the sun streamed through the curtains, casting a warm glow across the room. I stirred, feeling Ryan's arm draped over me, his breathing steady and calm for the first time in days. For a moment, everything felt peaceful, like the storm had finally passed.

But as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, I knew it wasn't over. Luke might have been defeated, but the shadows of our past still loomed large. The fight in the underground was just the beginning—now we had to face the truth.

Ryan woke up beside me, his eyes meeting mine with a soft smile. "Morning," he murmured, his voice husky from sleep.

"Morning," I whispered back, but there was a heaviness in the air that neither of us could ignore.

We spent the day in quiet, moving around each other like two people trying to find their way back. But the truth hung between us, unspoken.

Finally, as the sun began to set, I couldn't hold it in any longer. "Ryan," I said, my voice trembling slightly. "We need to talk."

He looked at me, his expression wary but resigned. He knew this conversation was coming. "About what?"

"About everything. About us. About what happens next."

Ryan sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Lyra, I—"

"Ryan, I love you," I interrupted, my voice steady now. "But we can't keep pretending that we can outrun our past. Luke isn't the only thing that's been haunting us. It's everything—our families, the underground, the way we've been living. We need to figure out what we really want. Where we really want to go from here."

Ryan stared at me for a long moment, his eyes filled with emotion, but then he nodded slowly. "You're right. We can't keep doing this."

We spent the next few hours talking, really talking, about our future, about what we wanted for ourselves. Ryan told me about his dreams of leaving the underground for good, of finding a way out of the life that had consumed him for so long. And for the first time, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we could find a way to build something new—something that wasn't built on fear or pain or violence.