misstruenorth
After two years of surviving love across distance, Max finally believes the distance is over. She moves to a new city with her longtime partner - a career military man - only to watch him leave again for a summer-long training deployment. What was meant to be the start of together becomes another season of waiting.
Alone in an unfamiliar city, Max drifts through her days trying to hold onto a love that feels increasingly out of reach. One evening, she meets a stranger by chance. Their connection is effortless and electric, filled with adventures and unspoken possibilities. Max keeps it carefully contained, clinging fiercely to her commitment and the life she believed she was building.
Everything fractures the night a robbery erupts at her workplace. Max acts on instinct, crossing a line she never imagined herself capable of crossing. Throughout her recovery, she struggles to accept the torment of lost memories and the painstaking reality that she survived and someone else did not. Fear and guilt blur together as she grapples with the word 'murderer', even when the law insists otherwise.
Her partner returns early but changed and distant, absorbed in military culture, nights of drinking, and a life that no longer reaches for her. Meanwhile, the friend she once kept at arm's length becomes her most consistent source of support - present in ways that feel both comforting and dangerous.
The final unraveling forces Max to confront not only the betrayal of the man she loved but an even deeper truth: survival has changed her, and a love without presence may no longer be enough.