David’s jaw tightened when he noticed me. “Unbelievable,” he muttered.
I didn’t answer.
“You bring him here now?” he said, louder. “Parading your little fantasy relationship in front of her grave?”
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Elliot freeze. His fingers curled into my hoodie. But he squared his shoulders and kept talking to Natalie.
I stepped half in front of him without thinking. “This isn’t your moment,” I said evenly.
David snorted. “Everything about this is wrong. You always were.”
I felt Elliot’s gaze on my back. His silent approval soaked into me as he trusted me to take care of the situation.
“Leave,” I said.
David’s mouth twisted. The tip of his tongue dragged over his teeth like he was debating what to say next.
“You don’t deserve her son,” I continued.
I didn’t move. Neither did David. The smoke from my cigarette curled between us. For a second, I thought he might actually swing at me.
Instead he spat at my boots and turned away. I crushed my cigarette into the dirt. And was by Elliot in the blink of an eye. My arms wrapped around him the second he exhaled.
“You okay?” I murmured.
He nodded. “You stayed,” he whispered.
“I always will.”
We stood there a moment longer. Then he kissed his fingers and touched the headstone once more. “I love you, Mom. We’ll see you soon.”
We walked back toward the truck slowly; the sunlight picking out the golden strands in his hair like it was trying to crown him. His head rested against my side, his arm tucked around my waist, keeping us locked together like he needed the proof of contact to stay grounded in the moment.
I didn’t mind at all. I needed it too. When we reached the edge of the cemetery hill, Elliot slowed. He looked toward the cliffs where the land fell away into endless blue.
The cliffs behind the house he grew up in were the place where grief had once almost swallowed him whole.
“Can we go there?” he asked softly.
I squeezed his hand. “Yeah,” I said. “We can go there.”
We drove the familiar winding road in silence. Not the brittle, anxious quiet we used to live inside. The soft, understanding kind. The kind that felt earned, where you knew each other's darkest secrets and stayed.
Instead of parking at the house in case David had gone back there, I carried on straight past it. The paint on the siding wasfresh now. The porch that used to sag a little was perfectly level. Someone had even replaced the mailbox.
An errant thought tickled the back of my mind, but I ignored it for now. There were far more important things that needed my attention. I took the track down to the pull-off and parked up.
We walked the narrow path through waist-high grass, the wind carrying the salt of the ocean and the sweetness of wildflowers like the ones Elliot had picked earlier.
When we reached the edge, he stepped forward without hesitation. I expected my chest to ache as memories of that night assaulted me, but they were nothing more than quiet background noise.
Elliot wasn’t standing there like he was waiting to be pushed. He stood with his shoulders open, his weight evenly balanced, his gaze steady as he watched the horizon like it was something that belonged to him now. Like it was a beginning.
I came up beside him and let my shoulder brush his. “You made it,” I said quietly.
He smiled, real and devastating as he shook his head. “No. We did.”
The ocean stretched out below us, calm and endless. Unafraid of what was to come. The same ocean that had once been a mirror of his grief now held only light.
