I want to go home. Back to you. –Elias
Elias
The car smelled like mildew and cigarettes. The kind of scent that sticks to your clothes, your hair, your lungs.
I sat in the back seat, hoodie up, cap pulled low, fingers wrapped around a lukewarm coffee I hadn’t touched.
Outside the window, the street was quiet. Broken neon signs flickered above shuttered liquor stores. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked once and went silent.
My earpiece crackled.
“Two minutes,” someone whispered.
I didn’t reply.
My other hand was in my pocket, curled around a small piece of metal.
A keychain.
Tiny. Silver. Shaped like a house.
You always made me feel safe. Like home.
Her voice echoed in my head like it always did when things got too quiet.
I thought leaving would be the hard part.
It wasn’t.
The hard part was her eyes.
The way she looked at me that night. Not angry. Not begging.
Just… trusting.
Like she believed I’d come back. Like she didn’t need to ask.
And that look had stuck in my chest ever since, like something splintered under my ribs and never came loose.
I couldn’t message her. Couldn’t call. Couldn’t even think about it for more than a few seconds without compromising everything.
But I did think about it.
Constantly.
Her laugh. The curve of her handwriting. The way she always touched my arm when she was trying not to say something.
The way she said my name like it meant something.
We were deep in this now.
Three of us undercover, feeding information back to a task force that wasn’t allowed to exist.
They thought I belonged here.
I dressed like them. Talked like them. Ate their food. Let them talk shit about women, and cops, and the world.
I played along.
Until one of them made a joke about girls being replaceable, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek until it bled just to stop myself from reacting.
Because the only face I saw in my head was hers.
Liana, sitting at her desk, legs crossed at the ankles, edited a worksheet.
Liana, laughing when she burned her toast.
Liana, curled into my chest, whispering, I missed you. I missed this.
I didn’t sleep well.
Not here. Not with them.
But a few nights ago, I crashed. Full blackout.
And I dreamed.
She was there.
Wearing my hoodie, hair messy, eyes shining with unshed tears.
“Please come back to me…”
I woke up in a panic. Gasping. Clutching the keychain like it could bring her back.
My chest hurt.
Not from fear.
From missing her.
Four more days.
Just four.
And then I was done.
I would crawl back to her if I had to.
And this time, I wasn’t letting go.
