Chapter Twenty Three

The Distance Between Heartbeats

AURORA

Disappearing is harder than it looks.

It isn’t the packing — the clothes you leave behind, the photos you burn, the phone you snap in half and drop into a river. It’s the silence that follows. The way the world continues without your name attached to it.

I became a shadow three days after Zane turned himself in.

New hair. New city. New apartment with bare walls and borrowed furniture. Elara handled the logistics with surgical precision, but she couldn’t erase the ache that followed me everywhere like a second skin.

Every night, I dreamed of him.

Not the man on the news.

Not the monster they described.

But Zane in quiet moments — his sleeve rolled up, his fingers tapping when he was thinking, the way his voice dropped when he said my name like it was a risk he kept taking anyway.

I told myself it was withdrawal.

I told myself it would fade.

It didn’t.

The message came at 2:14 a.m.

Unknown Number.

No greeting. No explanation. Just one line:

Are you safe?

My heart stopped.

I stared at the screen for a full minute, fingers hovering, breath shallow. It couldn’t be him. They monitored everything. Phones, letters, visits.

And yet—

I typed back with shaking hands.

Yes.

The reply came instantly.

Good.

That was all.

I pressed the phone to my chest, eyes burning. He was alive. He was thinking of me. And somehow, impossibly, he’d found a way to reach me.

I shouldn’t have responded.

I knew that.

But love doesn’t ask permission.

---

ZANE

The walls were gray.

Not metaphorically. Literally. Every surface in this place was the same dull shade, designed to flatten thought and drain color from memory. The hours blurred. Days passed in controlled silence.

But I was not alone.

I had her number memorized before they ever took my phone. I’d carved it into my mind like a lifeline. It took weeks to route a message through enough dead ends and favors that no one would trace it back to me.

When her reply came, my chest tightened so sharply I had to sit down.

She was safe.

That was enough.

I didn’t tell her where I was.

I didn’t tell her what they’d taken from me.

I didn’t tell her how the nights stretched endlessly, haunted by the echo of her voice.

Because this wasn’t about comfort.

It was about restraint.

---

AURORA

We didn’t talk every day.

That would’ve been reckless.

Instead, messages came like stolen moments — spaced out, careful, intimate in their restraint.

Did you eat today?
Did you sleep?
Is the city kind to you?

Sometimes I didn’t reply.

Sometimes I replied with lies.

But always, always, I waited.

One night, I typed something I shouldn’t have.

I hate what you did.

The response didn’t come right away.

When it did, it was slow. Measured.

You’re allowed to.

I closed my eyes, tears slipping free.

I don’t know how to forgive you.

Another pause.

Then:

I didn’t do it to be forgiven.

That hurt more than any apology could have.

---

ZANE

She was angry.

Good.

Anger meant she was still fighting, still alive. I could live with being the villain if it meant she didn’t become collateral.

But some nights, alone in the dark, I allowed myself the truth:

I missed her.

I missed the way she challenged me. The way she saw through me. The way she made me want to be better without ever asking.

When the message came — I don’t know how to forgive you — I felt the weight of it settle deep into my bones.

I didn’t deserve forgiveness.

I deserved distance.

---

AURORA

The visit request arrived two weeks later.

Restricted.

Monitored.

One hour.

I stared at the approval notice until the words blurred.

Seeing him would break something in me.

Not seeing him already had.

I stood in front of the mirror that night, studying the woman I’d become. Harder. Quieter. Less forgiving.

“Don’t fall apart,” I whispered to my reflection. “You survived worse.”

The facility was colder than I expected.

The room smaller.

And when he walked in—

God.

He looked thinner. Bruised in places he couldn’t hide. But his eyes… his eyes were still Zane. Sharp. Intense. Soft when they found me.

For a moment, we just stared.

Then he spoke.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

I laughed weakly. “You don’t get to decide that anymore.”

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

We sat across from each other, a table between us like a warning. His hands were folded calmly, but I knew the tension beneath it — the need to reach, to touch, to close the distance.

“I hate you,” I said quietly.

“I know.”

“I loved you,” I added, voice shaking.

His breath hitched. Just once.

“I still do,” he said.

The words landed heavy and undeniable.

I stood abruptly, chair scraping back. “This is a mistake.”

“Then why are you crying?” he asked softly.

I wiped my face, furious with myself. “Because loving you feels like self-destruction.”

He looked at me then — really looked — like he was memorizing my face for survival.

“Then don’t love me,” he said. “Live. Be free. Be everything I couldn’t give you.”

The guard cleared his throat.

Time.

I hesitated, then leaned forward, lowering my voice so only he could hear.

“This isn’t over,” I said. “I don’t know what this is… but it’s not finished.”

His eyes darkened with something like hope.

“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”

I turned and walked away before I could change my mind.

Behind me, the door closed.

But the fire didn’t.

It never did.