Then she looks at me, her gaze softening. “Let me get you some ice, dear.”
Before she can fully step out of the room, Leo blurts, “Lois, how the hell did you even get in here when that door was locked?”
She smiles at him, all innocence, as if she isn’t holding a shotgun in a bathrobe.
“My key, of course. You gave me a spare in case you ever got locked out.”
Leo stares at her. Horrified. And I collapse onto my side, laughing so hard I nearly roll off the bed.
Lois, still unfazed, shuffles toward the kitchen. “You two take a shower and clean that blood off your naked bodies while I make you some tea.”
So, we do. Because what other option is there?
THIRTY-FIVE
TORI
I waketo sunlight spilling across a bed that doesn’t belong to me and yet feels, somehow, like the safest place I’ve ever been. The sheets smell like detergent and Leo, faintly crisp and warm, and the pillow beside me is still dented from his head. For a long time I just lie there, staring at the ceiling, letting my own breath rise and fall.
I used to start every morning with a weight in my chest. A running tally of how I’d bend myself that day—what tone to take, what edges to soften, how much of myself I could risk showing without breaking something fragile.
That’s gone now.
The absence is almost startling.
My body is my own. My choices are mine.
I am mine.
That’s what so many people couldn’t—wouldn’t—understand: leaving wasn’t about choosing someone else. It wasn’t even about ending a marriage.
It was about stepping into myself. Finding the woman I’d buried under years of silence and compromise and shame.
She’s here now. Awake. Breathing. Whole.
And because I know I’m whole, I can choose love without fear of losing myself again. I can choose Leo—not because I need him to fill the empty spaces (those belong to me now) but because life is so much brighter, so much richer, with him in it.
I roll toward the nightstand and find the note propped against the lamp.
This man and his notes.
GF,
Ran to the store. Don’t panic. Needed sherbet. Figured your tongue probably isn’t ready for bacon and eggs, and I refuse to be the man who serves you a breakfast that hurts. Back soon. Don’t move. Or at least, don’t put any clothes on.
I love you.
BF
P.S. I emailed Dr. Johnson and told him both of us would not be in the office today due to a late-night medical scare involving my neighbor. That is not, technically, a lie.
I snort, pressing the paper to my lips. Sherbet for breakfast, of course. And the P.S.? Only Leo would turn last night’s fiasco into an excuse to miss work.
I slide back beneath the sheets, tucking the note beside me like a talisman. The quiet hums in my chest, steady and certain.
For the first time in forever, I know that I could be fine on my own. But I don’t want to be.
I want this. Him. Us.
