The silence between them felt suffocating, as if the walls of the café had closed in around her, trapping her in a reality she couldn't escape. Will's hand remained on her shoulder, too warm, too familiar. The weight of it made her feel smaller, more helpless than she had ever been in her life.
May tried to steady her breathing, but the anxiety had already sunk its claws deep into her chest. There was no way out of this. Will had made that clear. The grip he had on her life was unbreakable, no matter how far she ran or how many times she tried to escape.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he repeated, his voice soft, almost comforting, like a promise. But it was a lie. His presence, his obsession—it was a constant threat that she could never ignore. It wasn't love; it was control. It was manipulation.
May felt a coldness settle in her bones, a realization that seemed to eclipse everything else. She wasn't going to escape him. She wasn't going to be free. She was going to be his, always.
She forced herself to look at him, to meet his eyes. His face, so familiar, so wrong. The twisted affection in his gaze sent a shiver down her spine. He wasn't just watching her; he was waiting for something. Waiting for her to surrender. Waiting for her to accept that this was her life now.
Her mind raced, her thoughts spinning in a whirlwind of terror and hopelessness. She couldn't outrun him. She couldn't fight him. She couldn't call for help—he had taken every avenue from her. The world outside the café felt distant, like a dream she would never return to.
"Will, please," she whispered, barely finding the strength to speak. "Let me go. I just want to be free."
Will's expression softened, and his grip tightened, as if reassuring her that she would never be free from him. He tilted his head, studying her, his eyes clouded with something that might have been pity. "You'll never understand, May. You never will. This is the way it's meant to be. I'm doing this because I love you."
The words stung. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that love didn't look like this, that love didn't mean suffocating someone until they had no will of their own. But she knew it wouldn't matter. His mind was made up. He would never change. He wasn't capable of love, not in any real sense. What he felt for her wasn't affection—it was ownership.
She felt trapped in a prison of her own making. Even though she knew, deep down, that there was no way out, the part of her that still clung to hope wanted to fight. It wanted to scream and break free. But there was no fight left in her. She had nothing left to give.
She couldn't fight him, couldn't outrun him. Her body felt numb, and her thoughts began to blur into one overwhelming, suffocating truth: this was her life now. Will had won.
"I'll always be with you," Will whispered, his voice a promise, a warning, and everything in between. "I'll never leave you."
He was right. He wouldn't. He never would.
And as the weight of his words sank deeper into her soul, May realized that no matter how much she wished for things to be different, she had already lost. She had already become part of his world—whether she wanted to be or not.
As she sat there, her gaze falling to the cold cup of coffee in front of her, the reality settled in like a lead weight pressing down on her chest. The world outside was no longer hers. She had no control. No way out.
Will was all she had left.
And for the first time, May understood that she would never be free. Not from him, not from the nightmare he had turned her life into.
She wasn't going anywhere.
The end.