“How many families actually wanted you to stay?” I asked.
He looked away.
“Luke.”
“Most of them.”
I remembered one foster mother Denise had mentioned.
She had talked about permanent guardianship.
Luke packed before she even finished explaining it.
“Why did you leave her?”
Luke closed his eyes.
“Because I wanted to leave first.”
“Why?”
When he looked at me again, tears were streaming down his face.
“Because leaving hurts less when you’re the one who decides when it happens.”
I couldn’t speak.
Luke had spent years making sure he was always the one who walked away.
Being abandoned had hurt too much.
So he had decided no one would ever get the chance to leave him first.
Then he whispered something else.
“I was going to do it to you.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“When I moved in, I had a plan.”
He couldn’t look at me.
