For Blakely, it’s affection.
“Don’t be stupid,” she says, like a warning and a blessing in the same breath.
Then the door closes behind them, and the house exhales.
It’s just me and Sloane now.
The quiet presses in immediately.
Sloane doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. She just keeps staring at the screen, the movie still rolling with the volume low, actors moving their mouths without sound.
I stand there for a second too long, not sure what version of me she needs tonight.
The man who can make her laugh.
The man who can hold her when she breaks.
The man who can pretend he isn’t carrying a phone call in his pocket that could shatter everything.
I clear my throat softly. “You okay?”
She lets out a breath through her nose—almost a laugh, almost not. “That’s the dumbest question in the world.”
I nod. “Fair.”
I move closer, careful. Like she is a wild animal. Like she’s glass. Like she’s both.
I sit on the edge of the couch, leaving space.
For a second, she doesn’t look at me. Then her eyes shift sideways, landing on my face like she’s checking to see if I’m actually here.
“You were gone a while,” she says.
“Just a couple hours.” I keep my voice casual. “But Carter talks like he gets paid by the word.”
That earns me the tiniest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
It’s not a smile.
But it’s the first sign of life I’ve seen in her tonight, and it hits me like a punch to the sternum.
I swallow. “How was…today?”
She stares forward again. “I cried in the shower…before you left.”
My throat tightens.
Not because I didn’t hear her earlier, but because she says it so plainly, like she’s listing a task she completed. Like grief is something she can schedule between brushing her teeth and putting her hair up.
Then she adds, quieter, “And then I stopped.”
I nod slowly, like that makes sense. Like I understand how she can just turn it off.
I don’t. But I’m learning not to argue with the things she has to do to survive.
“Did you eat?” I ask.
Sloane huffs, adjusting the blanket in her lap. “Half a grilled cheese.”
