❝i hope you find your way home,
and i hope it's far from where you are.❞

❘❘

CRAMPING AND BLEEDING. That's what they told me I'd experience.

Enzo thought I should do it before I left New York, and I agreed. It just felt right to... end things here.

Tal vez un día, everything in this city will be a distant memory—all the people and the drugs and the death and the mistakes. Maybe it will only be a warped nightmare, lost in the haze of smoke and sex of an endless summer, or tattooed onto blue-lined paper, trapped within a frayed notebook.

Maybe it will be nothing but the faint trace of ice in my veins, a reminder of the casualties of drug wars and border wars, and maybe I'll only ever think of Julian Rivera when I'm cold.

I'll feel it—an inked anchor caressing my cheek, tracing chilled skin, memorizing and worshipping, like the ghost of a lonely religion. I'll see it—in that veil of hazy morning light, when we looked beautiful, when we were wild and free, surrendering to greed and manipulation and lies, drowning in misguided love... and together, we could take over the fucking world.

When I step out of Planned Parenthood, I feel like I'm anchored to the bottom of the fucking city. There are moments I'll never get back, and there are moments I don't want, but somewhere in between, in the hopeless heartbeats, in the breathless gasps, in the reckless desperation, hay momentos when I felt alive.

I felt strong and whole and happy and real.

I felt invincible, indestructible, infinite.

Will I ever... feel like that again?

I hear a soft cry, but it barely makes sense that it's me. Who am I? Who am I without... esos sentimientos?

As I still, staring up at a grey sky, waiting, waiting, waiting for some fucking nuevo comienzo, my breath twists from my lips in wisps of chilled air. It's cold, and I'm still numb, but it's... it's not forever.

I won't feel like this forever.

A gust of cold air bites at my bare cheeks, drying the tears until they barely exist, and between fluttering lashes, I watch a monochromatic world blur by, softening into shades of grey, leaving me behind in a violent fantasy of snowstorms.

"We'll take over the world," I told him one late night in the beginning, reeling from some breathless high, wasted on a maelstrom of midnight gravel, "and it will always be winter."

Beneath a filter, a foggy film, a thick piece of glass, everything is frozen, and... I'm surrendering to an icy embrace, and snow starts to fall, kissing my cheeks and lips, and... and... I'm alone.

❘❘

**IT IS OVER, and we finally get the first snow of the season. Un nuevo comienzo. ❄️

I love every single one of you. ❤️ This story means so much to me, and without you guys, it would have hurt a hell of a lot more to push it out.

I do have an afterword coming out, to explain a little bit more (and hopefully get some of your opinions on some things about this story) but also to answer any questions! ☺️ SO. If you have any questions, PLEASE leave a comment here. ❄️