The door closes behind him with a softclick, but it echoes like a gunshot in my chest.
And just like that, I’m alone.
With a couch that still smells like him.
Panties that are ruined.
And a heart that’s still stupid enough to hope he turns back around.
17
It’s strange how life keeps moving. How the world spins on without hesitation while inside you feel like you’re slowly dying.
After Brandon, I fell into something I didn’t have a name for at the time. Just a heavy, gray version of myself. I floated through weeks like I was underwater while suffocating on dry land. Eventually, I sat in a sterile room across from my doctor, and she gave it a name. Depression. She gave me a little yellow pill and said it wouldn’t fix everything, but it would help keep me above the tide.
That’s how I know I’m depressed again now.
Because I recognize the way everything feels distant. I go through the motions—writing my articles, attending events, laughing at family dinners—while some detached version of me watches from behind a thick pane of glass. Present, but not here.
Nothing gets through.
Except them.
Will and Missy.
That’s a thing now.Will and Missy. Just the thought makes something inside me twist, low and mean.
I don’t know when they became official. Only that they are. And while Will once looked me in the eye and swore nothing had happened, I’m sure the same can’t be said now. Not with the way she clings to his arm in public. Not with the photos I can’t seem to avoid on social media. Not with how I saw them plain as day kissing at Cheyenne Frontier Days.
I was across the arena. They didn’t see me. But I saw everything. And it felt like the air got sucked from my lungs. Like the little, barely stitched seams in my chest ripped wide open again. He looked happy. She looked victorious. And I stood there, holding notebook like a shield, pretending I wasn’t breaking.
I spiral slowly.
Quietly.
Like slipping beneath the surface without a sound.
I get really good at pretending. Smiling in pictures. Asking about other people’s lives. Sending thank-you texts I don’t mean and laughing at jokes I don’t hear. I stop replying to Bonnie as quickly. I start skipping post-event dinners. Even Sam, who always knows when something’s off, doesn’t say much anymore. Maybe he thinks I’m just busy or maybe he’s so busy with his own life that he doesn’t see what’s happening.
I keep writing, keep performing, keep moving because the minute I stop, it all rushes in.
I wake up in the mornings and feel nothing. I fall asleep at night and feel everything.
And just when I think I might be getting a handle on it, like I can keep it hidden in that neat little box I built for heartbreak, I walk into the barn at Liam’s place and hear Liam and Olive talking softly near the hayloft.
They don’t see me. They’re facing away, arms brushing as they lean over an iPad.
“We’ll do a small ceremony,” Olive says, her voice warm, glowing in a way that makes my stomach ache. “Just family. Under the cottonwood.”
Liam laughs. “I thought you said you wanted big and over-the-top?”
“I did.” She grins up at him. “But now I just want you.”
He pulls her close and presses a kiss to her temple. “We’ll make it perfect.”
I back away before they notice me, each step heavier than the last. Because it’s not just that everyone else is moving on. It’s that they’re finding joy in things I used to believe in.
Love.
