Until The Last Day (Claire and Lorenzo) novel Chapter 13

Lorenzo’s POV 

I had a very long dream that felt like an entire lifetime. 

In that dream, I was four years old again. The summer light was soft, and cicadas screamed outside the window. I saw the family moving into the house next door. Among the boxes and voices, a little girl with a ponytail stood beside her mother. She was three months younger than me. She looked quiet at first, shy almost, but there was fire in her eyes. 

She noticed me staring and smiled first. 

That girl was Claire. 

From that day on, she grabbed my sleeve and pulled me to play. She loved the swing most. She always wanted me to push her harder. 

“Higher,” she’d say. “I want to fly up to the sky.” 

She used half her pocket money every week to buy two packs of sour gummies and would share one with me without thinking. When we got scolded together, she always stepped forward to take the blame alone. 

She was like that from the beginning. Brave. Loyal. Soft-hearted yet fierce inside. 

She was the center of my childhood world. 

We grew up side by side, through scraped knees, school projects, crushes, exams. She became the teenager who waited outside debate rooms with my backpack. I became the boy who saved the best seat for her during assemblies. We studied in the same library booth through SAT winters, promising we’d go to Harvard together, and we did.

We became each other’s best friend, first love, dream, habit. 

We went from childhood friends to lovers, from lovers to husband and wife. 

She once had a future full of infinite possibilities. She could have chosen any life. But she chose me. And on our wedding day, with all our families and friends watching, I vowed that I would love only her for the rest of my life. 

I once believed that was the ending. The fairytale. The happily ever after. 

But real life wasn’t like that. Marriage didn’t freeze time or guarantee warmth. Day after day, the weight of responsibility, guilt, routine, silence, all those things ate away at us. The love that felt like it could last forever became fragile, became dull, became lost between breaths and unspoken loneliness. 

I watched Claire’s happiness dim, slowly. I watched despair grow in the space I created by turning away. I wasn’t able to prevent any of it. I wasn’t able to prevent catastrophe before. I couldn’t save Claire’s parents when their plane went down. I couldn’t restore her health after the accident. I couldn’t even stand my own guilt and cowardice enough to protect her last bit of dignity. 

My heart rotted under the weight of reality. And the person I loved most slipped away from me inch by inch. 

The story wasn’t supposed to end here. But this dream, a lifetime inside my head, ended abruptly.  

When I opened my eyes again, the world was white and blurry. The ceiling looked unfamiliar. My throat burned. My head felt heavy. 

My mother was there beside me. 

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