Just one wall away. She was only feet from me and I had never felt farther from home.
THIRTY-FOUR
SELENE
The house was dark.
Not the kind of quiet dark stillness that soothed, but the kind that pressed in from all sides. As if the walls themselves knew something had shifted and were holding their breath along with me.
Winnie’s breathing had finally deepened, soft and rhythmic from the other room. I’d kissed her forehead three times before tucking the blanket higher on her shoulder. She didn’t stir. Winnie had whispered something incoherent in her sleep and curled tighter onto her side, completely untouched by the crack that had split the night wide open.
I was glad for her capacity to forget so quickly, to rebound like a rubber band while I felt like shattered glass wrapped in tissue.
I stepped quietly down the hallway, fingers brushing the wall as I went. On the other side, I could still feel him. Not in any literal way—but like an echo caught in the drywall, pulsing low and persistent.Austin.Just a few feet away, separated from me by nothing more than plaster and paint and everything I didn’t say.
I paused outside my bedroom and closed my eyes.
A wave of something thick and hot curled through my chest. It was grief, but not clean. It was stitched through with shame, with anger, with that sick twist of embarrassment I hated more than anything.
Because I’dhoped.
I’d let myself believe—really believe—that I could have something different this time. That he was different. That maybe we were building something steady. Something real. Something that could last longer than the breathless beginning.
He loves me.
I turned the knob and pushed the door to my bedroom open.
The room felt unfamiliar in the dark. Maybe it was me who didn’t belong anymore. I moved by muscle memory, stepping around a laundry basket, reaching for the edge of the bed before my hand dropped to the basket instead. I crouched and pulled out the shirt that I had tossed in earlier that week—something Austin had worn when he had stayed over last.
I pressed it to my face.
It still smelled like him. Like cedar and sunlight and salt. Like sweat and soap and something I hadn’t let myself name until now.
Home.
I sank to the floor.
Just folded down onto the hardwood like my body couldn’t bear its own weight. The shirt was crushed against my chest, my arms locked around it like a shield. My spine curled, my forehead met my knees, and I stopped pretending.
The sob that broke free was ugly. It cracked open my throat and left me raw.
I tried to muffle it into the cotton—tears swallowed down so Winnie wouldn’t hear—but another followed, and another. There was no fixing it, no gathering the pieces into something presentable.
I cried the way a woman cries when she’s been too strong for too long. When her body forgets how to carry it all without collapsing under the load.
When she realizes, too late, that she let someone in past the gates.
I should’ve known better. Ididknow better. Every instinct had warned me, and still I’d done it—I’d let my guard down. I’d let him in. I’d let myself fall in love and believe in a future I hadn’t dared imagine before.
And for what?
It wasn’t even about the missed performance. It was about lettingmyselfdown. It had become achingly clear that the pattern wasme. The one where I gave and hoped and controlled everything around me so I couldn’t be let down again. I was making the same mistakes all over again, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
I’d gotten comfortable with Austin’s help. For so long I’d waited for someone to meet me halfway that I forgot how painful it was to realize that no one was rescuing me but myself. I had desperately wanted things to be different.
Being a mother meant that I needed to be stronger than that.
I gasped through a sob, breath hitching hard in my chest. The shirt slipped from my hands, crumpling in my lap.
