Chapter 3

She turned toward the door.

“Wait,” he said again, weaker this time, his voice barely carrying.

She didn’t stop.

“I’ll become better,” he said, his words trembling uncontrollably now. “I swear I will, I’ll fix everything, I’ll become someone you don’t feel ashamed of, just… just give me time, just stay until then.”

Her hand rested on the door.

“I don’t have time for unfinished people,” she said.

And then she opened it.

The storm rushed in all at once, cold wind and heavy rain crashing into the quiet space, filling it with chaos that felt almost deserved.

She stepped outside, and without turning back, without even a final glance—

“Try to become someone worth remembering.”

And she was gone.

The door remained open.

Rainwater began to spread slowly across the floor, inching its way toward him as if the outside world was entering to claim what was left.

Liam stood there for a moment longer, completely still, as if his body hadn’t yet received the message that everything was over.

Then suddenly, without warning, his knees gave out beneath him and he hit the ground hard, but he didn’t react, didn’t try to get up, didn’t even seem to register the impact, because something inside him had already fallen much harder.

His hands pressed against the wet floor, fingers trembling violently as his breathing turned uneven, sharp and broken, each inhale feeling like it was cutting through him instead of sustaining him.

“I… I can fix this…” he muttered, his voice barely audible, the words falling apart even as he spoke them. “I just need time… I just need to become…”

But the sentence never finished, because it no longer made sense.

Nothing did.

Her words replayed in his mind, not in order, not clearly, but all at once—ashamed… not enough… never meant to stay… unfinished—each one louder than the last, each one carving deeper into what little remained of him.

“No…” he whispered, shaking his head weakly, as if denial could still change something. “No, that’s not true… it can’t be true…”

But it felt true.

Too true.

His chest tightened unbearably, a suffocating pressure building until it felt like there was no space left inside him for anything else—not hope, not strength, not even breath.

And then—

It broke.

A raw, guttural sound tore out of him, uncontrolled and unfiltered, not the kind of cry that can be hidden or silenced, but the kind that comes from somewhere so deep it doesn’t ask for permission.

He bent forward, his forehead hitting the floor as his entire body shook violently, his shoulders trembling under the weight of something that could not be contained anymore.

Tears mixed with rainwater beneath him, indistinguishable, endless.

“I tried…” he choked out, his voice breaking beyond recognition. “I really tried… I gave everything… I didn’t hold anything back…”

But it wasn’t enough.

It was never enough.

His fingers clawed weakly at the floor, as if trying to hold onto something that had already slipped too far away.

“I’ll become better…” he whispered again, but this time there was no belief left in the words, no strength behind them, just emptiness echoing back at him.

The storm outside roared louder, relentless and unforgiving.

But inside—

Inside that small house in Brahmapur—

It was worse.

Because inside, there was no thunder to release the pressure, no rain to wash anything away.

There was only a man who had loved with everything he had, and in doing so, had given away every piece of himself until there was nothing left to hold him together when it was all taken back.

And as he lay there, broken and trembling on the cold, wet floor, it wasn’t just heartbreak that consumed him—

It was the slow, unbearable realization that sometimes love does not fail because it is weak, but because it is given to someone who no longer knows how to carry it.

And in that moment—Liam did not just lose her.

He lost the version of himself that had believed he was enough. He lost his wife... the one for whom he worked day and night, his frayed shirt, his rough fingers, his disheveled hair, pale face were all the witness of it. His breath trembled with an intensity that I'm not sure is biologically possible.

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