Chapter 29 The Ones Who Leave

People always think leaving is freedom.

They forget it’s also a wound  the kind that keeps bleeding, no matter how far you run.

I left him on a Tuesday.

The sky was the same color as the ocean before a storm, and he was standing by the window, saying nothing, like silence could save us. Maybe part of me hoped he’d stop me. That he’d finally fight for something. For us. But he just looked away, and that was how I knew it was over.

No words. No tears. Just a quiet surrender that sounded too much like permission.

I didn’t go far, not at first. A friend had a spare room in Lisbon, and I told myself it was temporary a few months to breathe, to think, to forget the way his eyes used to follow me even when I wasn’t looking. I found a job at a small publishing house, spent my days surrounded by other people’s words because mine were too heavy to speak.

For a while, it worked. I rebuilt myself with routines  coffee at dawn, quiet walks, pretending the loneliness was peace.

But healing doesn’t happen just because you move countries.

Sometimes, it follows you like an echo.

I’d catch myself reaching for two cups instead of one.

Buying the same cologne he wore, just to pretend I wasn’t missing him.

And then I’d curse myself for still caring.

It wasn’t love I missed  not exactly.

It was the version of me I was when I was with him fearless, reckless, certain.

When I left, I thought I was choosing freedom.

But really, I was running from the version of me that loved him too much to survive it.

Years passed quietly. I met Liam a man who looked at me like I was the only steady thing in a world built on noise. He was gentle, kind, patient in the ways love books promise but real life rarely delivers. For a while, I thought I’d done it  found peace after chaos.

But peace without closure is just silence.

And silence eventually starts to sound like guilt.

It started small. A dream here and there.

His face. His voice. That look he gave me the night before I left not anger, not sorrow. Just something I couldn’t name. Something that still asked “why.”

When Liam proposed, I froze.

He thought it was because I was surprised.

I didn’t tell him it was because, in that second, I remembered another man’s hands  the ones that let go too easily, the ones I still felt when I tried to hold someone new.

That was the night I knew. I had to go back.

Not to stay but to finish what I started.

So I came back.

Not to claim him.

Not to destroy what he had built.

But to see if the ghosts still lived where I left them.

The city hadn’t changed much, but I had.

He wasn’t mine anymore, and I told myself I was fine with that.

Then I saw her.

Amara.

The woman I’d heard whispers about before I even arrived. The one who unknowingly inherited my unfinished story.

I didn’t plan to meet her. Fate did that for me.

We sat in that café, two strangers connected by the same man, the same past.

We didn’t fight. We didn’t cry. We just… looked at each other.

And in that moment, I saw it the ache in her eyes, the strength in her silence.

She didn’t hate me. She pitied me.

And somehow, that hurt more than any insult could have.

When I left that café, I finally understood what I’d done  not just to him, but to her. To myself.

I’d broken something sacred: belief.

I’d made him doubt love so deeply that when he finally had it, he couldn’t recognize it.

And now, she was the one paying the price.

Liam doesn’t know I came back. He thinks I’m still away on a work retreat. I tell myself it’s not a lie  it’s just not the whole truth.

Sometimes I wonder what he’d say if he knew that part of me still lives here, in this city, walking the same streets I once ran from.

Would he understand?

Would anyone?

Tonight, I walked past his building. The lights were off except for one faint glow in the living room.

I could’ve knocked. I almost did.

But then I remembered Amara’s eyes, calm and unshaken.

She didn’t need to see me again, and he didn’t deserve to relive it.

So I turned away.

The rain started softly, the way it always does when memories get too loud.

And for the first time in years, I didn’t run from it. I let it fall, washing off the weight I’d carried for far too long.

Maybe that’s what closure really is  not a conversation, not an apology, just a quiet surrender to what can no longer be fixed.

I don’t know if I’ll see him again.

I don’t know if I should.

But I know this: some loves aren’t meant to return. They’re meant to remind you.

He taught me that leaving doesn’t always make you strong. Sometimes it just makes you aware of what strength costs.

Tomorrow, I’ll fly back to Lisbon. I’ll tell Liam I missed him. Maybe I’ll even mean it.

But tonight, I’ll let myself ache  for what was, for what could’ve been, for the woman I used to be before I learned that love, no matter how deep, can’t survive where truth refuses to live.

And as the city sleeps beneath the rain, I whisper a quiet goodbye to the man I never stopped loving  not to call him back, but to finally let him go.