“Why do you keep choosing me?”
“Because even on your worst days,
you feel like home.”
“If I break,” she said quietly,
“promise you won’t look at me differently.”
He brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
“If you break, I’ll just learn how to hold the pieces.”
Beyond the edge of the sleeping city, where the buildings thinned and the sky felt wider, there stood a house with its windows unlit, as though it had chosen darkness not out of neglect, but out of preference. The wind moved gently through its broken shutters, carrying the scent of rain and old wood, and for a moment, it felt as if the house itself were listening for footsteps that would never return.