Chapter 15: The Boy Who Stayed
Clark
I watched her burn the world down with calm hands and fire in her eyes.
And I stayed.
Even when she didn’t ask me to.
Even when she thought she didn’t want me to.
Because loving Mia wasn’t a gentle thing.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjuHn8rJvsd
It was like loving a storm—sacred, destructive, necessary.
I met her when she was a name on a list.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZxzChXR5j4
A blurred screen in a private browser.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXdLXEhr8rU
A girl you watched, but never really saw.
But the woman I found?8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNZohHAaOAh
She was more than the camera allowed.
After everything—after Solene, after Rafe, after the truths spilled like wine—we disappeared.
We didn't run.
We just… stopped needing an audience.
We found a town that didn’t know her name.
A small house with chipped paint. Salt in the air. A silence that wasn’t hollow.
There, she didn’t wear makeup.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0OTCUrTWut
Didn’t flinch when she woke up.
She learned to drink coffee again without fearing it was laced.
And I watched her breathe.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbVAqkZ6Ts4
Not survive. Not pose. Not fight.
Just… breathe.
Some nights, she still has that look in her eyes.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ16tHwREkXj
Like she’s standing at the edge of something only she can see.
And I know she’s remembering it all.
The contracts.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmo7Rjhta4l
The coercion.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhTf2H7b1dE
The girl she had to become to survive.
She doesn’t talk about it often.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4xJz6kYLL8
But she lets me sit beside her in the dark.
And that’s enough.
People always ask—why didn’t I try to save her?
But what they don’t understand is this:
Mia never needed saving.
She needed someone who wouldn’t run when she started the fire.
Someone who would stand by the ashes and still call her home.
I started writing again. Not fiction.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaypY02axPm
Truth.
The real kind.
I don’t name her. I never will.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsmbocsIZml
But I write about the woman who looked into the eyes of her oppressors and didn’t blink.
Who chose vengeance over forgiveness.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtPigBe2Sgt
Silence over applause.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1nGsIy0cyK
Peace over fame.
And every night, when I close my laptop, I look at her—sleeping, breathing, real—and I thank God I stayed.
Because there’s something holy about being trusted by a woman the world tried to break.
She still wakes up at 3AM sometimes.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9BNM9JyD4x
Walks to the porch.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu33MgS2riS
Lights a cigarette she won’t finish.
And I follow.
We don’t speak.
But sometimes, she whispers, just loud enough for me to hear:
“I don’t know who I am without the war.”
And I always answer:
“You’re still here. That’s enough.”
They called her a pornstar.
A fallen woman.
A lost girl.
But to me?
She was the reckoning.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ36LXiMlh0i
The one who refused to stay quiet.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLIV0a8VTj3
The one who taught silence how to scream.
And I will spend every day loving her in ways that don’t make her flinch.
In ways that don’t ask her to be whole.
In ways that let her be.
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