The Morning Liam died, the sky looked nothing like tragedy.
It was soft.
Pale.
Almost tender in the way dawn brushed its light across my window.
For a fleeting second, I even thought it might be a good day — the kind that starts with quiet optimism and ends with something warm, something ordinary, something ours.
I never imagined it would be the day that split my life into two eras:
Before Liam
and
After Liam.
The knock on my door came at 7:12 a.m.
Two sharp taps.
One hesitant one.
The kind that tells you the person on the other side already knows your world is about to change forever.
I opened the door expecting a delivery package.
Instead, I found two officers.
Their uniforms were crisp. Their expressions were not.
And suddenly the hallway outside my apartment felt too narrow to hold the moment.
"Are you Mira Kristen?"
The older one asked, voice steady in a way that felt practiced.
Prepared.
Rehearsed for grief.
I nodded, though it barely felt like me doing it.
"There's been an accident," he said.
One sentence.
Four words.
And the corridor started tilting.
I didn't hear the rest — or maybe I did and my mind refused to record it.
All I remember is the shape of the message:
Liam. Motorcycle. Rain-slick road. No pulse on arrival.
No pulse.
No pulse.
No pulse.
The phrase ricocheted inside my ribs like a bullet that didn't know how to stop.
My knees almost buckled, but I swallowed the collapse out of instinct — as if staying upright might somehow keep him alive. As if standing could rewind fate.
The officer's voice softened.
"We're very sorry for your loss."
Loss.
The word didn't fit.
It felt administrative. Clinical.
Like Liam was a misplaced object instead of the heartbeat of my entire world.
I thanked them.
I don't know why.
Maybe politeness is the last defense the mind has before it shatters.
When they left, I closed the door quietly, almost carefully — as if any sudden movement might cause the universe to break a second time.
Then I sat on the floor.
The world felt impossibly silent, as if someone had pressed a mute button on reality.
I waited for a scream to come.
Or a sob.
Or anything human.
Instead, I heard… nothing.
Just a hollow, expanding quiet.
A quiet so complete it felt like standing in the center of an abandoned cathedral where even echoes knew better than to return.
My phone buzzed once on the coffee table.
His name lit up the screen.
Liam calling…
For a moment, hope surged through me like a desperate, foolish flame.
Maybe the officers were wrong.
Maybe this was him.
Maybe he was alive.
I grabbed the phone with trembling fingers.
But it wasn't a call.
It was a scheduled reminder — one he'd set last night:
"Breakfast with Mira — 8:30 a.m.
Don't forget the sunflower café."
A small smile emoji at the end.
My breath cracked.
A slow, raw sound tore through my chest.
That was when the tears came.
Not gently.
Not gracefully.
But in waves that felt like they were made of glass.
I clutched the phone to my heart and folded over it, the message glowing against my wrist like a piece of sunlight that arrived too late.
The world didn't feel like it had ended.
It felt like it had been emptied — leaving behind only this unbearable, echoing silence.
And in that silence, a truth settled with devastating clarity:
The love of my life was gone.
And I didn't know how to breathe without him.
TO BE CONTINUED....