Chapter 398 Come inside
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Chapter 398 Come inside
Mia’s POV
I didn’t sleep.
Not really. I lay in bed watching the ceiling, watching the way shadows moved when cars passed on the street below. The clock on my nightstand said 3:47 AM. Then 4:12. Then 4:38.
At 4:52, I gave up.
The apartment was dark and quiet. I pulled on running clothes in the bathroom with the door closed so I wouldn’t wake anyone. Sports bra. Leggings. The old Columbia sweatshirt with the hole in the left sleeve.
My mother was asleep on the couch, one arm hanging off the edge. Her breathing was deep and even. I left a note on the kitchen counter: “Went for a run. Back by 8. -M”
The building’s hallway was empty. The elevator hummed down. The lobby smelled like floor cleaner and something else. Something stale.
Outside, the air hit my face like cold water.
February in New York. The kind of cold that makes your lungs hurt when you breathe deep. I stretched against a parking meter, feeling my hamstrings pull. My calves were tight. Everything felt tight.
I started running.
Not fast at first. Just moving. Putting one foot in front of the other. The street was empty except for a garbage truck three blocks down, its mechanical arms lifting and dumping.
My breath came out in white clouds.
The pebbles under my running shoes made a crunching sound. I focused on that sound and tried not to think about anything else.
I ran faster.
My heart rate kicked up, I could feel it in my throat.
The buildings slid past. Storefronts with metal gates pulled down. A bodega with its lights on, someone inside stocking shelves. A man walking eight dogs.
My lungs started to burn.
A phrase floated up from somewhere.
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Chapter 398 Come inside
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Fate is just the path we run.
The sky was starting to lighten. Not sunrise yet, but that pre-dawn gray when everything looks washed out. Temporary.
I turned a corner without thinking about where I was going. Just following my feet. Following the rhythm.
The house appeared around the corner.
White brick. Black shutters. Three stories. A maple tree in the front yard that I’d planted the second year of my marriage. It was bigger now. The branches reached toward the second-floor windows.
I stopped across the street.
My chest was heaving. My legs were shaking. Sweat ran down my back despite the cold.
The house looked different. Smaller, maybe. Or I’d gotten bigger. Older. Changed in ways that made the house seem like something from someone else’s life.
I’d lived here. Kyle and me. For three and a half year before everything fell apart.
Is that real?
I’d painted the front door that particular shade of blue. “Aegean Sea,” the paint can had said. Kyle’d seen it and had said him coldly, “It’s just blue.”
The cold hit the back of my neck first.
Then heat. Sudden and close.
Then a voice. Low. Right by my ear.
“It’s six in the morning.”
My senses overloaded.
1 lost my balance.
Hands caught me.
Kyle.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, my heart trying to break through my ribs. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“You looked like you were going to fall over anyway.”
“Because you scared me!”
Chapter 398 Come inside
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“Sorry.”
He didn’t sound sorry. His hands were still on my arms, steadying me.
I pulled away. Turned to face him.
He looked slightly better than he had in the hospital, maybe it’s because of the morning light.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I was running.”
“At six in the morning.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
We stood there. Like strangers, standing on opposite sides of the sidewalk
“Come inside,” he said.
“What?”
“Come inside. You’re shivering.”
I was. My sweat was turning cold on my skin. My muscles were starting to cramp.
“Just to warm up. Then you can go.”
I followed him across the street instead.
The front door was still that blue. Aegean Sea. The paint was peeling now, especially around the edges where the wood had warped.
Kyle pulled out a key. The lock clicked.
The door swung open.
The smell hit me first.
Not bad. Just empty. That particular scent of a house where no one lives. Dust and old air.
Kyle stepped inside. Flipped a light switch.
“Mrs. Chen?” I asked.
“Gave her enough money to retire. She went back to Vietnam to be near her family.”
3/4
Chapter 398 Come inside
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I walked further in. My shoes squeaked on the wood.
The living room was empty. No furniture. Just walls and floors and windows with bare glass. The couch used to sit there, facing the fireplace. The coffee table I’d bought at that estate sale in Brooklyn. The bookshelf I had built myself.
All gone.
“I had everything moved to storage,” Kyle said behind me. “Except-”
He pointed at the mantle above the fireplace.
One thing sat there. A small frame. I walked closer.
It was a photo of me.
Taken at the park. I must be laughing at something off-camera. My hair was longer then. My face younger.
I did not remember I’d taken this photo before.
“How did you get this?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. I turned to look at him.
He was standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame. “I have my ways.
“Mia-“, he suddenly said.
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