Behind me, the house is silent.
Too silent.
I stay locked in the car, hands still wrapped around the steering wheel like it’s the only thing keeping me upright. My throat throbs with every swallow. Each breath burns.
She comes out a few minutes later.
Calm again.
Coat on. Hair smoothed. Phone in her hand.
She doesn’t look at me.
She walks to her car like this is any other night that ended wrong. Like she didn’t just try to end me.
Her engine turns over. Headlights sweep across the driveway, briefly lighting up my windshield—my face reflected back at me, pale, eyes too wide, fingerprints already darkening along my neck.
She backs out slowly.
Then she’s gone.
Red taillights shrinking. Turning at the end of the drive. Disappearing into the dark.
I don’t move.
I sit there long after the cold seeps through the floorboards, long after my hands stop shaking, long after the house behind me feels like a place I’ll never step into again.
Only when the road is empty—when there’s no chance she’s coming back—do I finally unlock the door.
And that’s when it hits me.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Grief.
Grief for the version of her I loved.
Grief for the man I was before this.
And grief for a house with a white picket fence, babies, and her barefoot in the kitchen, cooking on the stove. I want to remember her that way—the version of what we could’ve been.
Tony pulls in fast.
Too fast for the road conditions. Snow spraying up behind his tires, headlights cutting across the trees like he’s hunting something. He parks crooked, door already opening before the engine’s even off.
He takes one look at me and stops.
Doesn’t ask questions.
Doesn’t swear.
Doesn’t rush me.
Just crosses the space between us and grips my shoulder once—hard, grounding.
“Get in,” he says.
