The Art Of Falling Apart Novels & Stories

Warm and steady and very present. I focused on that. The specific weight of his hand. The temperature of it. In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight. Slowly, the wave passed. We sat there for a long time after. The house stayed quiet around us. I didn't know what time it was. It didn't seem important. "I'm sorry," I said eventually. "Don't apologize." "I fell apart on the stairs." "You're allowed to fall apart on the stairs." A pause. "You're allowed to fall apart anywhere. That's not something you need to apologize for."

The project wasn't about art. Not really. It was about being seen. About telling stories. About reclaiming something. Camille shifted nervously in her chair. "I know it sounds stupid." "No." The answer came instantly. "It doesn't." The younger woman's shoulders relaxed slightly. Jessica continued turning pages. The ideas became more ambitious. More detailed. More powerful. Then she saw a title written across one page. The Unbroken Collection The words hit her harder than expected. Because they felt true. Painfully true.

" I looked at the mess on the floor. I had no doubt that after I left, all these things would be thrown into the trash. The charge nurse did not care about them. She only wanted to humiliate me. Finally, she found the eight excellence certificates. After thinking for a moment, she fed them straight into the shredder. "Grace Walker, you earned these honors through our department. How can you have the nerve to take them away?" I listened to the shredder at work. Crunch. Crunch. In ten seconds, eight years of my effort were destroyed. But I did not argue. I did not even move.

Chapter Twelve The rain had been relentless all Friday. Sheets of water fell from the sky, drumming against windows and rooftops, as if the heavens themselves were mourning or warning. Nora sat in the art studio, trying desperately to focus on her presentation, but her brush hovered uselessly over the canvas. The colours and lines felt meaningless. Every stroke of paint blurred, smudged by the storm of emotions inside her.

As she spoke, tears flowed down her cheeks, and her hand rested on her slightly rounded belly. “Is it fair for a big company to bully a background-less artist? This is the age of the internet. If you don’t apologize, compensate me, and put my artwork back up, I’ll expose you online for how you’re treating a single pregnant woman!” Those words shifted the atmosphere; the people around us looked shocked. Ruby’s eyes glinted with a sense of triumph as she glanced at me, but the next second, someone yanked her arm hard. Ashton must have come in somehow and was furious as he confronted her. “What are you doing in Clara’s company? Are you here to cause trouble for her?”

The frayed ends of the Graft are starting to knit us together, but all wrong, a Frankenstein’s monster of a soul, stitched from mismatched parts. Failure is a cold clarity. This won’t stop. The frays will become permanent tears. Parts of me will get stranded in him. Parts of him will be lost in me. We will become a single, terrible being, a confused and screaming composite, forever reaching for a self that no longer exists. “We can’t…” I choke out, my voice raw. “Arthur, it’s pulling us apart by stitching us together.”

“You think you're so special—” "No. I think I'm done letting people like you make me feel small.” My voice doesn't shake or break as I cut her off. “So if you want to gloat about winning Knox back? Go ahead. But don't expect me to fall apart over it. I'm done falling apart.” The lie burns. Everything inside me is falling apart. The ache in my chest is unbearable. My hands are shaking. My heart feels like it's being ripped to pieces all over again.

My mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. But no words came. There was nothing to say. Nothing to explain. And in that moment, I realized— Everything was falling apart. Again. And I was standing in the middle of it. Watching.

“I feel like I’ve failed them. I let this all happen.” No, she said firmly. You’re still breathing. That means you haven’t failed yet. I sank to the ground and covered my face with my hands. “Why does everything feel like it’s falling apart?”

I pleaded in a shaky voice, my knees suddenly felt weak, so I sat down, not minding that people were passing by and watching me. "Your mom collapsed and when the doctors examined her, they said she was getting worse and she had just a few weeks-" I didn't listen to the rest of what he had to say. I ran down the staircase as my chest tightened. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I kept pushing through the wind, running as fast as my little legs could carry me. Tears kept falling from my eyes but I didn't bother to clean them.