I have ended things before — deals, partnerships, one marriage, a great many friendships that turned out to be transactions in disguise.

And I have learned that the endings which last are never the loud ones.

The loud ending, the screaming fight, the thrown ring, is almost always a negotiation in costume — a way of staying in the room, of forcing the other person to plead, of keeping the account open under the guise of closing it.

The endings that actually hold are silent, because they are not addressed to the other person at all.

They happen entirely inside you, in a language the other party does not even get to hear, and by the time they notice anything has changed, the decision is already old.

That is what happened to Callum on the deck.