#####Chapter 2

Elena

I woke to seventeen missed calls and thirty-two text messages.

Most of them were from Liam. A few were from our mutual friend group, asking if everything was okay. One was from my mother, which I deleted without reading. The last one, sent at 6:47 AM, was from Liam's mother, Rosa, asking if I'd "seen her son."

I didn't turn my phone back on fully. Instead, I showered, made coffee, and tried to ignore the flutter of guilt mixed with something that felt dangerously close to freedom.

By 9 AM, someone was knocking on my door.

I knew it was him before I opened it. Liam Russo stood on my doorstep in yesterday's clothes, his dark hair uncombed, his designer shirt wrinkled. He looked like he hadn't slept, and his eyes had that desperate quality that made my stomach clench—the same look he'd had when Jessica had cheated on him six months ago, and eight months before that.

"Hey," he said, and his voice cracked. "Why didn't you call me back?"

"Hi, Liam."

"Elena, I've been losing my mind. I thought something happened. I almost called your mom—"

"I'm fine," I said, and something in my tone made him pause. "I just needed space."

For fifteen years, I'd been the person who gave Liam space while asking for nothing. The person who adjusted her schedule, her plans, her entire emotional landscape around his needs. And for fifteen years, it had felt like the most natural thing in the world because I loved him.

But I was tired.

"Space," he repeated, as if the word was unfamiliar. "From me?"

"Come in," I said, because I'm not cruel, and Liam looked like he might actually fall apart on my porch.

He followed me inside, and Artemis hissed at him from the kitchen—she'd never liked him much, which I'd always found ironic. He collapsed on my couch with the kind of dramatic exhaustion that belonged in a movie.

"Jessica and I had a fight," he said. "A really bad one. I said some things I didn't mean, and she packed a bag, and I just... I needed to talk to you. And you weren't there."

There it was. The unspoken expectation that had anchored my entire adult life.

*You're supposed to be there.*

"What happened?" I asked, sitting in the chair across from him instead of next to him. Small rebellion.

He ran a hand through his hair. "She said I don't actually care about her, that I'm still emotionally attached to someone else." He laughed, but it sounded broken. "She's crazy. I care about her. I just... I think we're not compatible."

In Liam's vocabulary, this was the phrase that preceded him falling apart and disappearing into someone else's arms for a few months until he got bored. It was the phrase that meant I'd be getting 2 AM phone calls for the next three months. It was the phrase that meant he needed me, and I would drop everything, and we would go through this cycle again.

"Maybe she's right," I said quietly.

Liam's head snapped up. "What?"

"Maybe you're not compatible. And maybe that's okay. Maybe it means you should actually let her go instead of pulling her back in every time you get lonely."

His expression shifted through confusion, to hurt, to something that looked like anger. "Wow. Okay. So this is about what? Me not coming to your opening?"

"No," I said, and I meant it. "This is about the fact that I spent fifteen years being your emotional safety net, and I just realized that safety nets have to be secured at both ends."

The words came out steadier than I felt.

"Elena..." He stood up, and there was something desperate in his movement, something that told me he was genuinely worried he was losing me. Not because he loved me romantically—we both knew that wasn't true—but because I was useful to him. Because I was reliable. Because I was easy.

"I think you should go home," I said. "Talk to Jessica. Actually talk to her, not just tell her what you think she wants to hear. And maybe... maybe we should take a break from being in each other's pockets for a while."

"A break?"

"A real break, Liam. Not just distance. An actual, conscious break where you figure out who you are without me around to validate your choices."

He stared at me like I'd spoken in another language. "You're serious."

"I am."

For a moment, I thought he might argue. Liam was good at arguing—charming, persuasive, impossible to say no to when he wanted something. But something in my expression must have told him that this time, I wouldn't budge.

He grabbed his jacket. "Fine. I'll go. But this is... Elena, this is really hurt. I don't understand what I did wrong."

"You didn't do anything wrong," I said, which was the truth. "I just finally did something right."

After he left, I sat in my apartment in the sudden, deafening quiet and felt tears slide down my face. Relief and grief in equal measure. I'd just cut the cord to the most important relationship of my adult life. It felt like killing something precious.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

Unknown:This is Damien Russo. My mother gave me your number. She's worried about Liam and thought you might want to talk. Call me when you can.

Damien.

Liam's older brother. The one who'd been away most of the time I'd known Liam. The one I'd seen maybe five times in fifteen years, always briefly, always with a sense of him being slightly separate from the family—taller, broader, more dangerous somehow.

I had no idea why he was texting me. And I absolutely did not need any kind of drama from that corner of Liam's family right now.

I deleted the message.

By evening, I'd convinced myself it was fine. I'd set a boundary. It was healthy. It was necessary. I was becoming the kind of woman who made decisions for herself.

Then came the knock on my door at 9 PM.

I opened it expecting Liam, but standing on my porch was a man I barely recognized. Taller than I remembered. Broader. Built like someone who understood violence intimately. His dark hair was short and severe, and his face had the kind of sharp lines that suggested he'd been carved from granite and harsh decisions.

Damien Russo.

He had a box of my favorite Thai food from the place on Morrison, and when he looked at me, it was with an intensity that made my breath catch.

"My mother thought you might not have eaten," he said, and his voice was exactly like I remembered—deep and rough, like someone who didn't speak often and chose his words carefully. "And I thought you should know that Liam just showed up at my place, and he's a mess."

I stared at him, unable to move. Unable to speak.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

And that's when I understood that nothing in my life was about to be simple ever again.