Or she could look at me like she looked at me that night, hollow and shaking, and I’d have to resist the instinct to wrap her up and keep her there even if she hated it.
I knocked.
Footsteps sounded inside, quick and purposeful, and then the door swung open.
Dani stood there with her pink hair pulled into a messy knot, no eyeliner, no sharp jokes ready like knives. She wore a soft hoodie and leggings, barefoot, her face drawn tight with a kind of exhaustion I’d never seen on her before.
She looked at me and went still.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
Then Dani’s gaze flicked down the hall, like she was checking for someone behind me. Then back to my face. “Oh,” she said, and her voice was quiet this time. Flat. “It’s you.”
The echo of the last time hit me hard, like the hallway itself remembered.
I swallowed. “Morning.”
Dani blinked once, slowly. “It’s afternoon.”
“Yeah,” I said, because it was, and because I’d lost track of time somewhere between anger and fear.
She stared at me for a long moment, her expressionunreadable. Then she stepped back half a pace and opened the door wider.
“Come in,” she said.
I hesitated. “Is she…”
Dani’s jaw tightened. “She’s in the bedroom. She’s been sleeping since she got here.”
My chest tightened. Relief and something heavier moved through me.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
Dani’s eyes flashed. “Don’t thank me. You don’t get points for showing up. You get points for what you do next.”
The apartment felt warm, dimmer than the hallway, curtains drawn partway. It smelled like coffee and laundry detergent and something floral that made me think of Dani, not Tessa. There were blankets piled on the couch. A mug on the coffee table. A letter, folded, sitting near the edge like a thing that had been handled too much.
Dani closed the door behind me, and the sound hit the same way it had that night, final and contained.
My pulse kicked harder.
Dani walked ahead of me toward the kitchen, then stopped and turned, arms crossing over her chest.
“Before you see her,” she said, voice low, “you need to decide what you’re here for.”
I held her gaze. “I’m here for her.”
Dani’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not the answer I want to hear.”
I exhaled through my nose, fighting the urge to snap back. “I’m here because she left and didn’t say goodbye, and I’m in love with her.” I shouldn’t have told Dani before I told Tessa, but I needed to share it.
Dani’s gaze softened a fraction. “Okay.”
I swallowed. “Is she okay?”
Dani’s laugh was humourless. “Define okay.”She rubbed a hand over her face, then dropped it, her voice losing its edge. “She’s breathing. She’s eating a bit. She’s not… she’s not gone, Wyatt. But she’s not here either. Not all the way.”
Dani stepped closer, her voice steady. “She didn’t come back because she stopped caring. She came back because she has to stop hurting.”
