Her sleep is shallow. Her smiles are rare. She flinches in her dreams and stares out windows like she’s waiting for someone worse than Henry or George to show up next.
Watching her suffer every day, silently drowning in the aftermath… It’s almost worse than the moment I realized she was gone.
Because back then, I had adrenaline. A mission. Now all I have is the wreckage—and the woman I love, breaking a little more every time she thinks I’m not looking.
I tried everything. Sophia checks on her daily. Mia practically moved in. I’ve offered space, silence, support, distraction—anything that might help her come back to me. To herself. But she’s still somewhere I can’t reach, and that’s the part that’s eating me alive.
She won’t talk about the dreams. Won’t look at me when she wakes up crying. And when I touch her, she tenses—just for a second.
But it’s enough. Enough to make me want to tear the walls down.
A few days ago, Sophia and Mia tried an intervention. Gentle. Thoughtful. It didn’t work.
Ava listened, nodded, said thank you—and then quietly folded into herself like paper.
I knew then that this isn’t something we can push. But not pushing it doesn’t mean the silence hurts any less.
There’s this part of me—this dark, vicious part—that wishes George was still alive just so I could kill him again. Slower this time. And maybe that makes me the monster he said I was, but I don’t care. I don’t care what I become, as long as it means she never has to feel like this again.
I just want her back. Her real laugh, the one that wrinkles her nose. Her sarcasm, her quick comebacks, her fire.
And if I can’t fix this—if all I can do is sit outside the storm while she weathers it alone—then I’ll stay right here. As long as it takes. Because I promised her there would be no more secrets. And the truth is, I need her just as much as she needs to heal.
God, I just want to see her smile again. A real one.
I press my hand to our bedroom door, she's been sitting behind for hours now. I don’t knock. I just lean there, forehead to wood, and say the only words I can:
“I’m still here, Ava. I’ll always be here. Take your time… just don’t forget I’m right on the other side.”
And I wait. Like I’ve been waiting. Because love isn’t always grand gestures and perfect timing. Sometimes it’s just showing up, day after day, when everything’s broken— And being willing to bleed beside her while she learns how to breathe again.
Ava
The silence inside this room feels safer than the world outside it.
Even after all this time since I came home—and I still don’t feel home. Not in this house. Not in this skin. Not even with Elijah, who would carry the world on his shoulders if it meant I could sleep through one night without waking up screaming.
I hear him sometimes, moving quietly through the house when I pretend to be asleep. He thinks I don’t notice, but I do. I feel the way he watches me, not like he’s waiting for something— But like he’s mourning something.
Me. Us.
That version of me that laughed easily, that looked at him with fire in her eyes instead of apology. The version that let herselfbelieve she could be loved and safe at the same time. That girl feels gone now. And what’s left… I don’t even recognize her.
I want to talk. God, I do. I want to reach out, to crawl into his lap and let him hold all the broken pieces. But every time I try, my throat closes. Because what if I open my mouth and it all comes pouring out?
The shame. The fear. The worst of it—the tiny whisper inside me that still wonders if I deserved it. If I asked for it somehow by loving him too openly, too fearlessly.
That’s what George wanted, wasn’t it? To make me doubt everything good in my life. And I hate that he succeeded. I hate that I’m letting him win.
I hear Elijah’s footsteps outside the bedroom door.
Heavy. Slow. Hesitant, which is rare for him. He doesn’t knock.
Just rests his hand there, like he’s touchingme. And then I hear his voice, low and tired and full of everything he can’t say out loud.
“I’m still here, Ava. I’ll always be here. Take your time… just don’t forget I’m right on the other side.”
The words break me open.
