Just waiting.
I turn back toward my car.
I don’t look over my shoulder again, as I open the driver's side door and get in, not when I shut it and not when I start the engine.
I don’t look back because if I do… I might not leave.
Griff’s truck pulls away first, tires crunching softly on the gravel. A beat later, I follow.
But I still feel it.
The weight of his eyes.
Whatever held us together is already gone.
All thats left is the distance between us.
As the house shrinks in the mirror until it disappears completely, something inside me finally exhales.
Some endings don’t break you.
They free you. And maybe this was finally ours.
Chapter Eleven
The Weight of Silence
Jace
The truck’s taillights are already gone by the time I finally shut the front door. I stand there with my hand on the knob longer than I should, staring at the spot on the driveway where her car used to sit.
It looks wrong and empty.
Eventually, I lock the deadbolt and turn around.The house is too quiet, and not the good kind, the kind where I can hear the game on in the background and Sierra humming to herself in the kitchen. This is the kind that settles in your ribs and makes everything feel hollow.
The living room feels bigger now, striped down to bare space and quiet. Every corner points to what’s gone.
because there’s less in it. Bigger because all the empty space shows what’s missing.
Three faint rectangles on the wall where pictures used to hang. A dent in the leather couch cushion where she always sat, one leg tucked under her. The coffee table’s bare except for a ring from my water bottle and a stray piece of tape stuck to the wood.
She is gone.
I slowly walk farther in like the floor might give out if I move too fast. My shoes are too loud on the hardwood. Everything has an echo now.
Griff’s voice is still the loudest thing in my head.
You didn’t choose her. Not once. Not really.
You broke her.
I scrub a hand over my face, jaw tight.
He’s not wrong and that’s the worst part.
I sink down onto the edge of the couch, elbows on my knees, staring at nothing. There’s a tiny white hair tie sitting near the cushion seam. The kind she wore on her wrist when she’d forget it was there and spend ten minutes looking for one.
I pick it up without thinking, roll it between my fingers.
