I stood and hugged my dad. I held him longer than usual. I didn’t want to cry, so I pressed my face against his shirt and said nothing. He patted my back once. Warm. Solid. Present.
He left. I stood alone again.
I zipped the suitcase. The sound filled the room. Not loud. Just final.
I looked around the room. The old tie-dye curtain sagged in the corner. Band posters curled at the edges. The dent in the wall stared back at me, a reminder of a mirror and a moment I thought I could fix things on my own. Pieces of me still lived here, but they didn’t have answers.
I gripped the suitcase handle. My chest ached. I wanted him to ask me to stay. But he didn’t.
So I took a breath. Slow and sharp.
If he didn’t want me to stay, then I wouldn’t.
It would hurt. I’d miss him. But I’d been hurt before. I’d survive this too. Maybe it was time to stop chasing whatwouldn’t meet me halfway. Maybe it was time for something new.
JASON
The Lighthouse Diner had always made sense to me.
Order tickets. Pour coffee. Flip burgers. Solve problems you can touch. Simple math. Predictable flow. You serve people. You feed them. They leave full and a little happier. That’s how it worked.
But today, nothing clicked.
The griddle hissed too loud. The bell over the door shrieked like a fire alarm. Even the coffee smelled wrong, bitter and burned, clinging to my shirt like regret. I moved through the motions, but my hands felt borrowed. My skin felt too tight.
I dropped a plate of pancakes at table five.
“We ordered omelets,” the woman said.
I stared at her like she’d spoken another language. “Right. Sorry.”
At the counter, I poured decaf into a chipped mug and handed it to Jim Mather.
“Jason,” he said, blinking at the steam. “This better be caffeinated. I’ve got crab pots and a tide window.”
I nodded. “It is.”
It wasn’t.
Across the aisle, Mrs. Esposito raised an eyebrow behind her glasses. “If you’re trying to kill me with full-caf, at least throw in a cruller for the trouble.”
The diner felt foreign. Wrong angles. Wrong air. I tried to anchor myself at the counter, cloth in hand, wiping down the laminate. The motion had always steadied me. Today it slid right off.
Outside, rain traced lines down the window like something giving up. The light looked gray and tired. My wolf shifted inside me, pacing just under the surface. Not angry. Not hungry. Just uneasy. Like it knew we were losing something.
Levi cornered me after the rush. His arms crossed. His jaw set.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s going on? You’ve been a disaster since morning.”
I stared at the prep table. The stainless steel gleamed like it had something to say. “I have?”
“You gave soup to the milkshake guy. Fries to the toast table. You tried to hand me a receipt. And you just poured ketchup into a mug.”
I looked down. Red filled the coffee mug.
Levi sighed. “Talk to me.”
The weight cracked. The words came out. “Emily’s leaving.”
