And Every Now And Then I Fall Apart Novels & Stories

With each floor, I felt pieces of myself cracking, breaking, falling away. By the time we reached Harper's floor, I was barely holding it together. She unlocked her apartment, pulled me inside, and locked the door behind us. The moment I heard that lock click, something in me gave way completely. I collapsed. Not gracefully. Not cinematically. Just... collapsed. My legs stopped working and I went down hard, suitcase clattering beside me, and the sound that came out of me was animal. Raw. Broken. "I've got you." Harper was on the floor with me, arms around me, holding me while I shattered. "Let it out. Just let it out."

My voice came out as a broken whisper to no one, to everyone, to whatever was listening: “Please… not now… please…” And just like that, everything inside me cracked open.

“This is not about me.” “No, it never is.” I had said too much. But I didn’t take it back. Not this time. He stepped closer. Lowered his voice slightly. “We are weeks away from fixing everything.” Fixing. Like my life was something broken that needed repair. “You don’t get to fall apart now.” My chest tightened. “I’m not falling apart.” “Then act like it.” There it was again. Act better. Do more. Be enough. I swallowed. “I’m doing everything I can.”

I wonder how much more I can take before I completely fall apart. I set the phone down, my hands shaking uncontrollably now. I try to breathe, but it feels like the air won’t fill my lungs, like my body is betraying me just as much as my mind. How did I get here? How did I become this broken, this… defeated? I stand up from the couch, but my legs are weak. The room spins a little, and I have to lean against the wall to stay up. I close my eyes, trying to hold myself together, but everything feels so heavy.

"For leaving you here. For walking away. For being too weak to stay. For being too broken to face this alone. For being too afraid to let you see me like this. For being too scared to let you in. For being too ashamed to let you love me." I shook my head. "You don't have to apologize. You don't have to be strong all the time. You're allowed to break. You're allowed to fall apart. You're allowed to need someone. You're allowed to be human. You're allowed to be vulnerable. You're allowed to be loved."

"Look at me, Aiden. Do you really need to ask that question?" "I don't know anymore," I sob softly, pulling back from his touch because the sheer weight of everything is crushing my chest from the inside out. "Everything is falling apart. My body is failing, the resistance is tearing itself to pieces, and every time I look at you, I'm terrified that I'm dragging you down into a grave you already crawled out of once."

“But—” “No buts,” he interrupted, his voice firm, but there was a tenderness in it that made something inside me soften. “You don’t need to apologize for how you feel. You don’t need to carry all of it. Not anymore.” I swallowed hard, trying to push back the wave of emotion threatening to consume me. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” I admitted. “Everything feels like it’s falling apart. I keep making mistakes, and I don’t know how to fix them.”

What if my knee gives out. What if I fall. What if I try and prove everyone right - that I'm finished, that I'm broken, that the girl who fell at Nationals is all I'll ever be now. What if the ice is the last remaining thing I had and I step onto it and it's gone too, dissolved like everything else I thought was solid. The questions circle like vultures.

But he would stay close. Even if she never knew. Maya stood at her window again that night. City lights flickered below, beautiful and indifferent. She thought of Ethan of the way he had looked at her through the café window. Not angry. Not accusing. Just worried. Her chest tightened. She whispered into the empty room, “I’m trying.” No one answered. But somewhere deep inside her, something fragile and fierce took root. The crack had spread. And soon, it would break something open.

The mate bond pulled at me with every step. Begging me to stop. To turn around. I didn't. I couldn't. Not tonight. Tonight, I had nothing left to give. Hours passed. I ended up in a quiet park several blocks away. The city noise faded into the background. I sat on a bench beneath a flickering streetlamp, pulling my knees to my chest. For the first time in years, I let myself fall apart. The tears came hard and fast. Everything I'd been holding together finally shattered.