Chapter Eight | The Ride Home
Nothing happened.
And still—I couldn’t stop shaking.
Not in a way anyone else would notice. Not visibly. But inside, deep and quiet, my whole body felt like it was vibrating. Like my soul had been too close to something I wasn’t allowed to touch and didn’t know how to walk away from cleanly.
I drove with both hands on the wheel, holding it like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to right now. No music. No podcast. Just the low hum of the tires against the road and the sound of everything I didn’t say echoing inside me like it had nowhere else to go.
The hotel room had been… still.
Too still.
No big moment. No kiss. No unraveling.
Just the two of us, sitting on separate beds, pretending we didn’t feel what we felt.
I kept waiting for him to say something. To do something. But he didn’t.
He just held my hand for a little while. His thumb brushing the inside of my wrist like it meant something. Like it was an apology for a thing he didn’t know how to name.
And then he let go.
And I stood up.
And he didn’t stop me.
That’s what stuck.
Not that we didn’t sleep together. Not that he didn’t kiss me. I didn’t care about that. I wasn’t looking for drama. Or mess. Or something we’d both regret.
But he let me leave.
Without a word.
That silence hurt more than anything he could’ve said.
Now my chest felt tight—like part of me never made it out of that hotel room. Like some version of myself got left behind in the beige walls and the stillness and all the almosts we didn’t know what to do with.
At a red light, I blinked hard. Forced my jaw to unclench.
Nothing happened, I reminded myself.
But my body didn’t believe me.
It remembered the way his hand felt in mine.
The weight of the pause before he spoke.
The look in his eyes—like there was something there, right on the edge, and he just… didn’t let it out.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter. My knuckles ached.
This was supposed to be easy. Some weird version of closure. Our usual pattern—see each other, share a moment, pretend we’re fine, then disappear again. Space. Distance. Silence.
That had always been our rhythm.
And I hated it.
But I also didn’t know how to want anything else. Not with him. Not anymore.
The city blurred by outside the window—neon signs and taillights flickering through glass like reminders of how many times I’d done this before. How many times I’d told myself this would be the last.
I should’ve known better.
I did know better.
But I also knew the sound of his voice when it dropped an octave and got soft. I knew the way his presence made my shoulders unclench. I knew that even when we were doing nothing—it still felt like something.
And now here I was again.
Driving home alone with the shape of his silence sitting in the passenger seat, and the weight of everything we never said curling in my chest.
I pulled into my driveway.
Turned off the engine.
Sat there longer than I needed to.
I didn’t cry.
Not because I didn’t want to. But because I’d cried over him before, and it never changed anything. Tonight didn’t deserve my tears. It deserved quiet. It deserved the hollow ache of what could’ve been and never was.
I exhaled.
Got out.
Locked the door behind me.
And for the first time in a long time, I told myself:
Let it be what it is. No more waiting for what it’s not.
But even as I said it, I knew—I didn’t believe it.
Not fully.
Not yet.
