The Untethered Minis Presents

Untethered: Lucas "CJ" Hart

Lucas: No Was the Answer That She Gave Him pt2

Let me back up.

I didn’t make a big deal out of it. No playlist, no soft lighting, no baited moment where she had to say yes or break my heart. It was just me—sitting on the edge of the bed with a knot in my chest and too many tabs open in my head.

“I’m thinking about making the move. West Coast. El’s got connections, and she believes in the manuscript. I think I should be where the work is.”

She looked up from her phone like I’d just asked her if the earth was flat.

“You serious?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been serious.”

She stared for a second like maybe she’d misheard me, then let out this half-laugh—low, annoyed, disbelieving. Didn’t say anything else. Just looked back down at her screen and kept scrolling like I hadn't just handed her my whole future in one sentence.

That right there? That was her answer.

No.

She never said the word. But I heard it in the silence. In the way she shifted on the bed. In the fact that she didn’t ask a single question. She didn’t lean in, didn’t try to understand—she just... went quiet.

We didn’t talk about it the rest of the night. Or the one after. Or the one after that.

And look, I get it. She’d built something solid here. Her salon was thriving. Her name rang out. She liked stability. Comfort. Predictability.

But me? I was already halfway out the door in my mind. Not because I didn’t love her, but because I couldn’t shake this feeling that something bigger was calling—and I was ignoring it just to keep the peace.

A few nights later she finally said it, kind of out of nowhere. “I don’t get why you have to leave just to feel like something. You already are something.”

And I knew she meant it with love.

But it hit like a brick. Like love with strings. Like stay-small-for-me kind of love.

There’s a version of me that might’ve stayed. For her. For us. But it wouldn’t have been the full version. It would’ve been the edited one. The one that trades dreaming for maintenance.

So I told her the truth.

That I loved her. That I saw everything she was trying to give me. But I wasn’t staying. Because I couldn’t—not and still be myself.

And that’s how we ended.

No blow-up. No slammed doors. No breakup playlist.

Just a silence that wrapped around the whole house like fog.

I packed a week later.

Didn’t even finish my coffee that morning.