Instead, it landed hollow.
I let her go, watching as she gathered her things, kissed me once more—quick, sweet, final—and slipped out the door with a reminder that I should pick up pastries from the bakery below her condo for a taste test.
The door clicked shut.
And I was alone.
Again.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the space she'd just occupied, and felt the emptiness rush back in like water filling a hull.
It wasn't her fault.
She had a business. Responsibilities. A life that existed outside of this room, outside of me.
But even in the short time she'd been gone earlier—meeting with Portia, handling logistics I didn't fully understand—I'd had too much time to think.
About my father.
About the woman who'd walked into Joy's shop and asked questions she had no right to ask.
About my mother, who'd held our family together with sheer will and love, and how I'd failed her by not being enough to keep the darkness at bay after Dad left.
All of it.
Every buried thought, every piece of unprocessed grief, every jagged edge I'd spent years smoothing over with violence and distance and the cold comfort of being alone.
It was all threatening to take me down.
And the only thing that fixed any of it—the only thing that quieted the roar in my head—was drowning myself in her.
In Joy.
In the way her body fit against mine. In the sounds she made. In the way she looked at me like I wasn't broken beyond repair.
But she was gone now.
And I was left with myself.
I thought about following her. Showing up at the shop, standing in the corner like some kind of guard dog, making sure nothing and no one got close enough to threaten her.
But that was insane.
Possessive in a way that crossed lines I didn't have the right to cross.
She wasn't mine to cage. She was mine to?—
I stopped the thought before it could finish.
Because I didn't know what she was to me yet. Or what I was to her.
I pulled out my phone and checked the hours at the bakery. Open until five. Three blocks away. Easy walk.
Fine.
I could do that.
I got dressed and headed out the door, telling myself I wasn't running. Just ... moving. Keeping busy. Doing something normal for once.
