I lingered longer than I meant to. Her apartment felt like a graveyard without her. She won’t be going back, so I brought the pieces she couldn’t live without.
Just enough to make her feel safe. Just enough to help her see—she belongs at the cottage... with me.
Next, I stopped by to pick up her self-care staples: rose hip shampoo and conditioner—it smells delicious. All her favorite makeup from Sephora. The perfume she spritzes on her wrists before leaving the house.
I stocked the cottage with her comfort foods: the spicy chicken ramen she makes when she’s sad and too tired to cook.
The iced caramel coffee she always orders, but never actually drinks.
I even picked the peanut butter chips out of her favorite trail mix.She hates those.
I want it to feel familiar when she steps inside. To see her handwriting on the sticky notes I peeled from her bathroom mirror. To open the pantry and know every shelf was stocked for her.
No one ever did that for me. No one ever made a place feel safe. I know what it’s like to open a cabinet and find nothing behind it. To be forced to do vile things just for enough scraps to survive. She’ll never know that feeling. Not with me. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her.Except let her go.
His cabin comes into view, and my thoughts scatter. I move to the window where I left the contact mic and slip the headphones over my ears.
I go still the moment I hear the panic in her voice. She’s talking about the asshole who toyed with her after Anna died.
I hold my breath for a full minute.
I hate it when she cries like this. It’s the kind of sound that makes you want to undo a man, limb by limb.
I never knew about the Polaroid he sent. It wasn’t his place to send a message. If I had wanted it dealt with, I would have handled it myself.
My fists are balled so tight my knuckles crack.
He pulls her to his chest. My skin itches.
He shouldn’t be holding her like that.
I lean my forehead to the icy glass and press the headphones tighter—like that may change what I’m hearing.
He doesn’t understand what she’s handing him right now.
Years of grief that I watched unfold day by day... he gets to learn it in a ten-minute conversation.
He cradles every cracked piece of her, but it’s me who kept those pieces alive. He doesn’t realize every heartbeat touching his chest already belongs to me.
Lumi-
The rise and fall of his chest anchors me. It’s the only way I know time is still moving.
His heartbeat is steady and loud. I count the beats until numbers stop meaning anything.
“You’re safe,” he whispers, his breath against the top of my head. I almost believe him...almost.
His fingers thread through my hair in a slow rhythm. Over and over again. Until my eyelids begin to droop, I’ve slept too much lately, but none of it has been restful. Most of it wasn’t even by choice.
The last thing I remember before I drift off is Andrik humming something soft against my hair. A melody I swear I’ve heard before.
When I wake up, he isn’t holding me anymore.
The room feels hollow without him. Overbearing and silent. There’s a note on the mirror above his dresser:
“Hope you slept well, beautiful. If I’m not back before you read this, I’m downstairs fixing the window, a ranch broke through it.”
I wrap one of his cloaks around me before heading downstairs. I sit by the fire, warming my hands for a moment—until movement at the edge of my vision.
