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It was 4:03 a.m. again.
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Another night I hadn’t slept.
Another night I’d been out in the streets looking for the man I used to call home.
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I sat on the edge of the bed, hoodie zipped up over my belly—four months along and already exhausted in a way no nap would ever fix.
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Saint hadn’t come back.
But honestly? His body might’ve walked through that door a hundred times, but he hadn’t been back in a long time.
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The last time we talked without screaming was weeks ago.
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“You high?” I had asked, staring at his twitchy hands.
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He laughed, low and careless. “Don’t start, Nova. You always on some drama.”
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“You think me calling out the fact you’ve been gone for three days is drama? You think smelling perfume on your hoodie and seeing numbers pop up on your burner that don’t belong to me is drama?”
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He rolled his eyes. “You always tryna police me. I ain’t your son, Nova.”
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“No,” I snapped. “You’re not my son. But you’re supposed to be my partner. And all you’ve done lately is lie, cheat, and disappear.”
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He turned toward me, jaw tight. “I ain’t cheating. You just paranoid. All in your head again.”
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Then the words that still burned:
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“You ain’t even fun no more, Nova. You always tired. Always crying. Always boring.”
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I remember going silent.
Not because it didn’t hurt.
But because it did. So deep I couldn’t speak.
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Tonight, I knew better than to wait for him.
He was gone somewhere—maybe in another woman’s bed. Maybe passed out in the back of a club. Maybe lying in a street gutter, still gripping the same lies he fed me in our bed.
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I stood slowly, one hand on the curve of my belly.
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I walked to the kitchen table and pulled out a piece of lined notebook paper.
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Dear Saint,
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I stared at those words for too long. Then I wrote what I never thought I would.
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I tried. Lord knows I tried to love the you that came home in pieces. I waited. I cried. I blamed myself for every time you disappeared, every woman you touched, every lie you told with my name still wet on your lips.
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But I’m done trying to put you back together while you’re still cutting me open.
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You stopped hiding it. The drugs. The women. The bruises. You stopped hiding who you were becoming. But I’m done hiding what I deserve.
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I’m leaving. And I won’t be here when you get back.
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I didn’t write this to hurt you. I wrote it so I wouldn’t hate you.
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Please don’t come looking for me.
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- Nova
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I folded it and left it on the pillow next to his side of the bed.
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No mention of the baby.
He didn’t deserve that part of the story.
Not yet.
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I grabbed my bag and walked out of our apartment for the last time, shutting the door behind me soft like a final heartbeat.
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And for the first time in a long time…
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…I didn’t look back.
