When I'm Gone I'm Never Really Gone Mga Nobela at Kwento

I said. I looked up at him. "Us becoming mates was a transactional exchange from the start. Shouldn't you be relieved that it's ending?" These words sounded so sharp that they didn't sound like something I'd usually say. Ever since Hannah fell into her deep slumber, the gentle, obedient version of me seemed to have died together with her in that enclosure too. I stood up and opened the door. "Alpha Jack, please leave." After Jack left, I heard he went to a bar.

For a time, I thought I could do it. As it turned out, I was wrong. I couldn't do it. "I'm not throwing a tantrum. I just don't love you anymore and don't want to be this close to you," I said. Colleen stared at me with a sinister look in her eyes. "Say that again." "I could say it ten times and it would still be the same. I don't love you anymore and want to keep my distance from you."

I was not back in a week. By the time I had handled what needed handling and made it back to the city, she was not at the coffee shop and not at the noodle place and not at her campus address and the number I had for her had been disconnected and the contact who had helped me find her in the first place came back with nothing. Three months later I received a message through a channel I trusted completely. She was gone. That was the word used. Gone. The way it was used when gone meant something specific and permanent, the way it was used when someone wanted you to understand that looking was finished.

"Until…' Then she was gone." Not gone the way people disappear into crowds — shoulder-turned, heads-down, absorbed by motion. Gone the way a flame goes out. Between one blink and the next, she simply was not there. The space where she had stood held nothing but platform grime and a discarded ticket stub and the fading warmth of afternoon light. Kai's hand stayed raised for several seconds more, fingers spread, reaching for something the world had already taken back. * * *

I set the file aside, smoothed out my coat, and looked down at the new project email that had just come in on my laptop. The glow of the screen reflected a calm, clear version of myself. Outside, Northland's snow fell steadily. Inside, I had the future I built with my own hands. Whatever regret Redwood Pack carried now lost its hold on me the moment I crossed that border.

Zayne had more money than he could ever spend, and Jeremy had received his punishment. It was finally time for me to go. The wind stirred around me. My body grew lighter, dissolving into strands of golden light that began to fade from my fingertips. I turned toward Vera's headstone and slowly knelt before it. "Mom," I whispered. "I'm coming to find you."

Too much like Kaiden pulling away, vanishing into the wind like he always did when things got too real. I didn’t want to give up on him. But maybe, just maybe, he had already given up on us. “He’s gone,” I said quietly. “You’re looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found. And it’s high time you fucking accept it.”

Past the park where she told me she wasn’t sure she could do this anymore. Every memory, still intact. Still sharp. And every streetlight, every song on the radio, every empty room in my penthouse only confirms what I already know: She’s gone. And I let her go. And no one—especially not Lila—is going to fill that space. Not now. Maybe not ever.

This is something I have to survive. For him. For us. “I’ll find you,” I choke out. “You better,” he replies. A faint smile. Fading. “I’m holding you to that.” And then— he’s gone. Not pulled. Not taken. Gone. Erased. Like he was never there. The silence that follows— it’s unbearable. Empty. Final. Something inside me breaks. Not loudly. Not violently. Quietly. Deep. Permanent. “Touching,” the figure says behind me.

Only one thought kept screaming in my head, over and over, like a broken record: He’s gone. I lost him.