Loving someone when you don't love yourself feels like holding a grenade with the pin half-pulled.
You know it's going to explode.
You just don't know when.
I stopped answering Kiaan's calls.
Stopped replying to his texts.
I told myself it was for his sake — that he deserved someone better, someone softer. Someone who wouldn't flinch every time he touched her like love was something that burned.
But the truth was, I didn't know how to be loved without bleeding.
And I was tired of bleeding.
Three days of silence.
And then he showed up at my door.
I didn't open it.
But he didn't leave.
I listened to him sit on the floor outside my apartment, back against the door, his voice quiet but steady.
"I don't know what you're trying to protect me from," he said. "But whatever it is — I want to face it with you."
I pressed my hand against the wood, my chest aching.
Why couldn't he just let me go?
On the fourth day, he slipped a letter under my door.
I didn't want to read it.
But of course, I did.
It was short — just a handful of sentences.
I know you're scared.
I know love feels like a trap right now.
But I'm not your father, Aria.
I'm not here to hurt you.
I'm just here.
And I'm not leaving until you tell me to my face that you don't want me anymore.
I broke.
I sobbed so hard I thought my lungs would cave in.
Because I didn't want to tell him that.
I wanted him.
I wanted him so much it felt like my body couldn't contain it.
But wanting someone wasn't the same as being ready for them.
I finally texted him back.
Three words.
"I can't do this."
He didn't reply.
But the next morning, I found a single rose taped to my door.
No note.
No message.
Just the rose.
And I hated him for it.
Because it meant he was still waiting.
I spiraled.
Stopped eating.
Stopped sleeping.
I threw myself into work like it could save me, drowning in spreadsheets and reports, numbing myself with deadlines until I couldn't feel anything else.
But every time I closed my eyes, I saw him.
The way he looked at me like I wasn't broken.
The way he stayed, even when I begged him not to.
And it made me furious.
Because he wasn't supposed to stay
I saw him again two weeks later.
At a coffee shop.
He didn't see me.
He was sitting by the window, reading a book, his leg bouncing like he couldn't quite sit still.
And he looked tired.
Like waiting for me was wearing him down.
Like loving me was killing him.
I almost walked away.
Almost let him go.
But then I imagined him falling in love with someone else — someone easier, someone who didn't come with scars and baggage and an entire lifetime of unhealed wounds — and the thought made me physically ill.
Because the truth was, I didn't want him to leave.
I just didn't know how to let him stay
I sat down across from him without saying a word.
He looked up, startled.
And then he smiled.
Not a big smile.
Not a triumphant one.
Just the kind of smile you give someone when you've been drowning and finally, finally, come up for air.
"I don't know how to love you," I whispered, my hands trembling.
Kiaan reached across the table and took my hand, his fingers curling around mine like he was afraid I'd disappear if he let go.
"You don't have to know," he said, his voice breaking.
He squeezed my hand, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
"You just have to let me try."
I wrote another poem that night:
I don't know what love is.
But I know what it isn't.
It isn't doors slammed shut.
It isn't silence stretched like barbed wire between hearts.
It isn't leaving before you can be left.
Maybe love is the person who waits.
Even when you run.
Even when you burn everything down.
Even when you look them in the eye and say, "I don't know how to stay."
And they just say —
"Then let me stay for both of us."