LILY
It’s the first weekend since the fight and my visit to the cemetery. Since everything with Josh fell apart. I convinced myself that shutting everyone out would hurt less. That it was for Penny’s sake that I sent her to be with Dorian and Josie again, away from the shrapnel of my heartbreak. But now I’m in the house alone with two days of nothing ahead of me, and the apartment feels too big and hollow. But also too tight, stiffening, airless.
I never thought silence could have a sound. But Josh’s absence has a distinct frequency—a low, persistent hum that follows me from room to room. It’s different from the emptiness Daniel left behind. That was a crater with no escape. Raw, jagged,final. Josh’s is more like fog: not as brutal, but just as haunting.
I drag my fingers along the kitchen counter, remembering how he stood here making pasta, telling Penny silly jokes about the tomatoes being afraid of the knife. His laugh—that honest, full-body rumble that made my chest expand—has been replaced by the drone of the refrigerator. Even that simple background noise seems too loud in the quiet.
I glance at the appliance to make sure it’s not breaking, and it’s another stab to the heart. I didn’t realize how many Polaroids Josh had added. Our little collection has taken over the entire top half of the fridge—snapshots of a life I’ve been pretending we weren’t building together.
After that first Polaroid of us hiking, Josh has pinned more of our adventures. One with Penny’s face a marshmallow mess and Josh mock-gasping at her sticky fingers stretched toward him. Another with me tucking a flower behind Penny’s ear as she beams up at me. Then Josh and me at the farmers market with Penny in the background, doing her best impression of a scarecrow. Josh and Penny with greasy hands after one of their repairs. Josh and me sitting side by side on a park bench, sunlight dappling across our faces.
The three of us look happy in them. We look like a family.
My heart cracks at the thought that it’s time to snuff out that dream, both for myself and for Penny. I’m about to unpin the pictures from the fridge when the doorbell rings. My stomach jumps into my throat. I know it’s Josh. No one else comes to visit me unannounced.
I wipe my clammy palms on my pajama pants and go get the door. My pulse stutters so loudly it drowns out everything else. And the second I crack the door open, the air thins. A sharp, silent inhale gets stuck somewhere between my ribs as Josh comes into view, his gentle eyes unbearably familiar and impossibly changed.
He’s clean this time, no soot smudging his skin, no lingering smell of smoke… only Josh, heartbreakingly solid in a soft gray T-shirt and jeans. For a beat, I can’t move, can’t even pull the muscles to smile or cry. He looks at me like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to step closer, and something inside me bends, not breaking, just quietly folding in on itself. Nothing heroic about him now, nothing larger-than-life—just a man with hopeful eyes and a gentle mouth, standing on the threshold of goodbye. Every cell in my body has to rearrange against the possibility of letting him in. What I want and what I must do are two very different things.
“Hey,” I tell him, opening the door wider.
His eyebrows jump, shock flickering in his eyes before a sheepish grin tugs at his mouth. “You’re letting me in? I expected I’d have to fight harder for that.”
“I didn’t like how I ended things,” I admit. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah.” Josh passes a hand through his hair. “You didn’t like the delivery, but you’re sticking by the message that you never want to see me again?”
I step back to let him in, nudging the door shut behind him once he’s inside. The click sounds louder than it should.
I turn and we face each other, unsure, until I give in to gravity and lean with my shoulders against the door because I’m so damn exhausted by everything I can’t even stand.
“Why are you making me do this again?” I ask. “There is no solution. We can’t be together, full stop. I am sorry for how I hit you and yelled at you the other day; it was inexcusable, but yeah, the message stands.”
“What if there was a solution?”
I blink, shaking my head. “There isn’t. You’re being cruel now.”
“I’m not,” he insists. “Is the problem between us just my job, or that you don’t want a relationship either way? That you’re not ready?”
He takes a step closer, looking at me with a stripped-bare gaze that makes me forget what I was so sure of.
“It’s pointless to spin out hypotheticals.”
I can’t do this. I thought I could handle a civil goodbye, but the second he’s in my space, all the logic in the world collapses, and I’m nowhere near as detached as I need to be.
I turn and grab the knob, ready to ask him to please leave. My hand trembles, and before I can twist it, Josh’s arm wraps around my waist from behind—strong and sudden, holding me in place. My breath catches, the shock of his touch fizzling under my skin. He pulls me back against his chest, bolder than he’s ever dared to be, like he knows this is his last chance. The contact is electric: it burns; it singes. I want to melt into him, but I force myself to remain stiff, fighting against how much I need this and how much it hurts.
Josh whispers in my ear, “I’m not tricking you. I just need you to be real with me right now, completely honest. Is it just the job?”
I turn in his arms, meeting those impossible eyes, and every version of the truth I’ve tried to bury claws its way up, hungry and wild. If I’m already bleeding, I might as well be honest about it. What’s one more cut?
29
JOSH
I can tell the moment Lily decides to lay it all out. It’s in the little crease between her brows, her mouth twisted in that impossible pout I’d die to kiss even just once. She’s determined not to give me an inch, to stand her ground against the possibility of us. And if that’s what she wants, I’ll accept it and disappear from her life like she asked, but not before I have fought tooth and nail for this, for us.
Our gazes hold, a mess of unresolved feelings and heartbreak flashing between us—her eyes pleading with me to let go, mine refusing to give up.
