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.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs1COsmKmoK
It was like loving a storm—sacred, destructive, necessary.
I met her when she was a name on a list.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV2lXaYJ13t
A blurred screen in a private browser.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJam0idIH6y
A girl you watched, but never really saw.
But the woman I found?10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1e03lifh60
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.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSPJPx35p2R
Didn’t flinch when she woke up.
She learned to drink coffee again without fearing it was laced.
And I watched her breathe.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6Aqw1hCH5j
Not survive. Not pose. Not fight.
Just… breathe.
Some nights, she still has that look in her eyes.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5XoNASq9o0
Like she’s standing at the edge of something only she can see.
And I know she’s remembering it all.
The contracts.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOE99oNbApT
The coercion.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡexEhjxrRlu
The girl she had to become to survive.
She doesn’t talk about it often.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUg7pXhONNh
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.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTv8a4ftCng
Truth.
The real kind.
I don’t name her. I never will.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK7y8WLAkIw
But I write about the woman who looked into the eyes of her oppressors and didn’t blink.
Who chose vengeance over forgiveness.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1QmbbY74n4
Silence over applause.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcfDYnrk0bo
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.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbJuSux4Jjx
Walks to the porch.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLUOG56KTl0
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.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡifwACYnS5Y
The one who refused to stay quiet.10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAjOfJJPVR6
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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