Two hundred and ten

~Reid~

The line went dead.

She hung up.

I sat there, the phone still pressed to my ear, long after the silence had settled in. It wasn’t just the end of the call. It was the end of whatever thread we’d still been clinging to — thin, frayed, maybe already severed before either of us admitted it.

But now it was real.

Fallon was gone.

Really gone.

The contract was terminated. The paper that had once tied us together — for business, for family, for protection — shredded in a quiet email no one else would ever care about.

I’d signed her freedom.

And somehow, in doing it, I’d made sure I lost her.

I told myself it was the right thing. That she needed to be unbound. That removing my name from her life would let her rebuild without my shadow darkening her light.

But sitting here now, in this too-quiet house with her voice echoing in my head, I knew the truth.

I didn’t do it for her.

I did it because I was a coward.

Because facing her would mean facing myself.

Because saying the words out loud