I woke up in the back seat of a moving car, barefoot, my wrists sticky with dried blood—but it wasn’t mine. The engine hummed like it had purpose. I had none. The road outside was endless and black, like the sky had fallen and swallowed the world.

My mouth was dry. My heartbeat loud. The last thing I remembered was the therapist asking, “What would you say to her, if she were still alive?”

I said nothing. Not then. Not ever.

“You always were a bad liar,” said a voice from the driver’s seat.

I froze.

No radio. No music. Just that voice.

Familiar.

Wrong.

“You’re not real,” I whispered.

She laughed.

It was her laugh. Her laugh.

“Sofia?” I croaked. My hands trembled.

A glance at the mirror. Her eyes met mine. Green. Tired. Smiling like she knew every secret I’d tried to bury.

Sofia died last year. Car crash. Instant. Closed casket.

I remember seeing the funeral home doors close like a mouth swallowing guilt. I didn’t speak. I didn’t cry.

“I told you I’d come back if you didn’t let me go,” she said softly. “You never let me go.”

The road outside shimmered. Or maybe I did.

She kept driving. Her face unchanged. Beautiful. Burnt into memory.

“I’ve been waiting,” she continued, “in every silence, every time you didn’t say goodbye.”

I wanted to scream. But instead, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Her hands tightened on the wheel. “It’s not too late.”

“For what?”

“To stop pretending you didn’t kill me too.”

Her words hit like ice water on open wounds. I broke down in the back seat, sobbing.

Because the truth was—I was the one driving that night.

I was drunk. She begged me not to.

She died. I lived.

And I lied to everyone.

The car slowed to a stop.

We were in front of her old house.

The porch light was on.

The door cracked open like it was waiting.

Sofia turned around.

But she wasn’t angry.

She was crying.

“This is where I leave you,” she said. “But it’s where you can finally come back.”

She vanished.

Not in a puff of smoke.

Not with flames or magic.

She was just… gone.

And I was alone.

Until I wasn’t.

The door creaked wider.

And I stepped out of the car, into the night, into the memory, into the grief I never faced—

ready to finally tell the truth.