It was worse this time around.Worse hearing it in its completion and knowing what he’s been trying to tell me.
I should be furious.
Hell, I should be anything other than this—standing here, caught in a moment that feels bigger than I know how to handle.
But I don’t move.
I can’t.
Because his song is a confession.
Every lyric, every note, a breadcrumb leading back to me.
I was too young to name it,
too scared to let it grow.
So I called it nothing, buried it deep,
but love has roots I didn’t know.
I exhale sharply, but it barely cuts through the tightness in my ribs.
Love has roots.
So does pain.
And for years, I thought I had dug him out.Thought I had torn every last piece of him from me.
But now—now I feel them.
The roots.Still there.
Still growing beneath the surface.
And no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, they never really left.
The crowd is roaring, but it’s nothing more than static behind the sound of his voice still echoing in my head.I should move.I should breathe.I shoulddo something.
But I don’t.
Because Ican’t.
I’m stuck in this moment, in his voice, in the truth I spent years trying to ignore and for some ungodly reason, I can’t anymore.
This is what he was trying to tell me earlier.It’s what shattered me at the party.I couldn’t listen—couldn’t hear it because I knew it would destroy me.
It’s always been me?
Even when he left?Even when he picked someone else?Even when he took my song and let me think it was nothing to him?ThatIwas nothing to him.
I should be so goddamn wary of this—of him—of everything he’s just confessed in front of a packed club like it was the easiest thing in the world.
But I’m not.
Because I feel every single word of that song like a live wire running through my veins.They feel like a pulse just under my skin—like something I’ve been waiting for but never let myself name.
They circle my brain again.