Until The Last Day (Claire and Lorenzo) novel Chapter 9

Lorenzo’s POV 

When I returned to the apartment, reality settled over me with a force I was not prepared for. 

My mother was right. 

Everywhere I looked, only my things remained. 

The closet had only my shirts. My jackets. My side of the dresser. 

The hangers that used to hold her skirts and cardigans were empty. The vanity with her perfume bottles and tiny clips and cherry lip balm was bare. The drawer where she kept her hair scrunchies was hollow. 

She had cleared herself out of this home before she left. 

As if she knew she was never coming back. 

My entire back felt like ice. I broke out into a cold sweat, gripping the wall just to steady myself. 

Mom followed me down the hallway, trembling. Her voice was sharp, cracking under pressure. 

“Lorenzo, what did you do?” she demanded. “Did you fight with her? Did you upset her with anything you shouldn’t have?!” 

I shut my eyes. “We didn’t fight. We haven’t fought in months.” 

“What?” she snapped. “Then how do you explain all of this? These empty spaces where only your things are left. This isn’t something that happens in a day or two. This is months of negligence. This is accumulation.”

Her words were like knives dragging through bone. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. 

“In this cold? Where could she go? Where would she sleep? You should have protected her! You made vows in front of her parents! What would they say now?” 

I swallowed hard, but my throat burned. Her parents. Their graves. Claire had talked to them that day. Like she was preparing them too. 

Mom’s voice turned desperate. “Call her. Apologize. Claire is soft- hearted. If you cry and beg, she’ll hear you. She’ll forgive you. She’ll come back to you.” 

I froze. 

Soft-hearted. 

Mom didn’t know Claire the way I knew Claire. She wasn’t weak. She didn’t beg for pity. When Claire loved, she gave everything. When she left… she never looked back. 

Claire didn’t go missing in confusion. Claire left in clarity. 

She knew. She knew about Aria. She knew about me. She had known for a while. She didn’t accuse me, didn’t question me, she simply erased herself, piece by piece, until she vanished like she never existed in my life. 

Her words cut into me like spells, ripping open a part of me I’d been avoiding facing for seven years. 

The car accident. 

Claire pushing me. Claire’s scream. Claire’s blood on my shirt. Claire losing her legs for the rest of her life… because I lived. 

If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t even be here. 

Claire never regretted it. Not once. I remember her telling me, three days after the accident, voice shaking but eyes determined: 

“Lorenzo, I would save you again. Even if it was 10,000 times.” 

I never forgot that sentence. I buried it. I buried so much. 

Now it returned like a torch in darkness. 

If Claire could save me 10,000 times… if she could sacrifice her future just so I could keep mine… then maybe, if I could find her, if I faced her honestly, if I begged her to look at me again, to hear me 

– 

Would she give me one more chance?