“Your worth didn’t fall off with your leg. You want to find connection again? Go earn it.”
I pull on my jeans, rake my fingers through my hair, and twist it into a low knot. Every movement pulls at memory, Celeste threaded through muscle and instinct in ways I never managed to unlearn. Her laugh flashes through me without warning. The way she burned pancakes so badly once that we had to open every window in my apartment, and still laughed about it for days.
I try to shove it all away, but it shoves back.
When I catch my reflection in the mirror, I don’t see the man I used to measure myself against. I don’t see a before-and-after split clean enough to define. I just see myself standing just as tall as I did before the car bomb, but now I have a few more scars and a carbon fiber lower leg.
Last night proved the biggest thing that hasn’t changed is that I am still stupidly, painfully in love with her.
For the first time in seven months, the thought doesn’t break me.
Maybe this is the moment my therapist keeps circling. The thin line between who I was and who I’m choosing to be. Not because I’m healed or because I’m suddenly fearless, but because I’m done letting fear make my decisions.
“Show up. Then keep showing up.”
That was another one of his gems.
Fine.
I can show up.
Grabbing my go-bag, I sling it over my shoulder and yank the suitcase off the bed before I do one last look around the room. Sass immediately hops off the bed and trots over, climbing into the backpack like this was always the plan, and he didn’t loathe it yesterday. He pokes his head through the little porthole and stares at me.
“Don’t look at me like you know everything,” I mutter.
He blinks at me slowly, like he absolutely knows everything.
The hallway is quiet as I step out, the hotel still half-asleep, and the elevator doors slide open with a soft chime. I step inside and let the doors close behind me, sealing me into the hum and glow of fluorescent light that’s far too bright for a morning that hasn’t fully arrived yet. The car starts its descent, smooth and steady, and the motion gives my thoughts something to press against instead of letting them spin completely out of control.
It doesn’t help much; she’s everywhere in my head.
Not in the memories I’ve replayed a thousand times already, but the unanswered space between us. The version of me she’s about to see. The question I’m not sure I’m ready to hear answered—whether she’ll recognize the man I’ve been fighting to become.
I want to show her that I can stand beside her without breaking. That I don’t crumble at the edges anymore. I need to show her that losing my leg didn’t carve my future out from under me, or leave me unfinished or fragile. I’m still capable. Still strong.
And still hers—if she’ll ever let me be again.
The doubt slips in anyway, quiet and insidious. Were we even together long enough for her to fall the way I did? Or was I always ahead of her, already planning a future she hadn’t fully stepped into yet?
No. I don’t let myself spiral there.
That’s the past, and I’ve spent seven months learning how to stop living in it. I’m done trying to rewrite what already happened. If there’s anything left for us, it has to be built forward, not backward. I rub a hand down my face, exhaling slowly at the thought.
What I can’t ignore is the look in her eyes last night. The restraint that somehow sharpened into something brittle. The anger she held just beneath the surface and what looked likeheartbreak she kept tucked so carefully out of reach, like letting it show would cost her something she couldn’t afford to lose.
If she hates me for what I did, I won’t argue. I made the decision for both of us and had convinced myself I was being noble instead of terrified. I told myself I was protecting her when what I was really doing was protecting my pride, my fear, and my inability to let her see me fall apart.
Therapy stripped that lie down to the bone.
Walking back into her world now—her real world, not the quiet half-life we shared in stolen moments—sets something restless stirring in my chest. It isn’t hope exactly. It’s closer to inevitability. Like I’ve been running in a circle and only just realized where it ends.
Maybe the universe is pushing us together again.
The thought is ridiculous. I don’t believe in signs or fate or cosmic timing; I barely trust my GPS. But standing here, descending toward her, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been brought back to the exact place I stopped moving forward.
The elevator dings, the doors slide open onto the lobby, and I step out. My shoulders tighten, and my breath suddenly too deep in my lungs. The hotel is bright and polished and quiet, a stark contrast to the dark-blue sky waiting beyond the glass doors. Cool air hits my face the second I step outside, grounding me, waking me all the way up.
A black SUV pulls to the curb right in front of me, and I check my watch to see if it could be mine, then straighten my shoulders and greet the driver, confirming this is my ride.
