Night settles around me like a heavy blanket I cannot push away. I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling as if the paint holds the answers to the storm in my chest.

My mind keeps circling one truth over and over again, I have to return to Santino tomorrow morning. I don’t want to. God, I don’t. But staying here, In my parents’ house, feels like its own kind of cage. A cage I escaped less than three months ago, yet stepping into it again earlier today made it feel like I never left. Like ...