Later, in bed, when she fell asleep beside me, I stayed awake a little longer. Watched the streetlight glow crawl across the ceiling. Felt her weight against me. Her breath warm against my neck. For months, I’d whispered one sentence into the dark.
Got to get home.
Now I was here.
Her arm was draped across my ribs, careful without realizing it. My leg throbbed in a dull, familiar way. My scars pulled when I shifted. But the ghosts were quieter.
For the first time since I crawled out of that wreckage, I wasn’t bracing for the dark to swallow me whole.
It just…settled.
Most nights, that was enough. On the ones it wasn’t, I’d lie there staring at the ceiling until the shadows started moving again. Counting breaths. Counting seconds. Counting the ways I didn’t deserve to still be here. Sometimes I’d slip out of bed and pour a finger of something amber into a glass. Just enough to quiet the hum under my skin. Just enough to take the edge off the memories without waking her.
It wasn’t about getting drunk. It was about turning the volume down.
I’d stand at the kitchen counter in the dark, swallow slow, wait for the burn to chase the ghosts back into whatever hole they’d crawled out of.
Then I’d go back to bed, trying not to wake her as I tried forcing myself to believe I was allowed this.
It didn’t always work.
Chapter Thirty-Five
? Holly ?
I woke to the sound of his cane tapping once against the bedroom wall and the soft scrape of a mug on the counter. Sunlight striped the floor. The apartment smelled like coffee and the citrus candle I forgotten to blow out last night. For a minute I let myself sink into it—the ordinary hum I’d prayed for. Just the two of us breathing.
He was at the stove when I walked in, hair rumpled, T-shirt crooked on one shoulder. He glanced back and smiled like the sun had finally done its job.
“Morning Malibu,” he said.
“Barely,” I said. “That clock has to be lying.”
He poured coffee into my mug and slid it across the counter. When I reached for the creamer, I watched him reach for the little bar cart I kept in the corner of the kitchen, mostly for shits and giggles because I wasn’t much of a drinker. He uncapped the small flask we had kept from some gift basket and tipped a bit into his mug. The sound was nothing—no louder than a drip from a faucet. But the movement was almost familiar. Like he had done this before, and I somehow hadn’t noticed. My heart changed tempo.
He saw me looking and raised a brow. “Breakfast of champions.”
“Classy,” I said, too light. My laugh came out bright and hollow. “You gonna garnish it with a cherry, too?”
He grinned, then took a sip. “Don’t tempt me.”
It was nothing. People did this all the time. A splash after a long night, a nightcap after a long week, a champagne toast at a wedding didn’t make anyone a villain. I told myself that once, then again. It’s fine. A drink every now and again is fine.
We sat at the table with our mugs and our separate to-do lists. I circled a few names for Willows Harbor. He drew a little wrench next to the name of an old man who swore his carburetor was possessed. I watched his hand while he wrote; the knuckles were still rough. I liked the look of those hands around a mug. The strong veins that ran along the back. My eyes slid back to the bar cart anyway.
It’s fine.
He left a glass half-full on the counter when he headed for the garage. I put it in the sink, rinsed it, ran the water until the smell was gone. A normal morning. Nothing to see here but a woman washing a glass that didn’t belong on the counter.
We got through the day. We got through the next. The house kept doing what houses do while I moved in quiet circles, picking up after us both like I could tidy the air, like control was the same thing as safety.
On Thursday I cleaned the bookcase, dusted the frames on the dresser. The picture of me, Mom, and Hannah was a little crooked. I straightened it. I opened the drawer where I kept my coin and shut it again without touching it.
In the living room I found a second glass on the coffee table. Not half full. Empty. I took it to the sink, washed it, and set it beside the first one. Two empty mouths facing up. No sound but the careful clink of glass on porcelain.It’s fine. People have drinks.
On Friday, I emptied the small trash can we kept by the bar cart. The bag was heavier than I expected.
It happened the way a body moved when it was hot and the stove was near—you didn’t think about not touching it. You just didn’t. It was late, and I was cleaning up after dinner. He went to the bathroom, the whiskey and Cokes he’d had running through him. One second, I was eyeing the bottle of Jack on the counter. The next, the bottle was in my hand. I froze, and when I twisted the cap, the little click sounded exactly like a the pop of a pill bottle opening.
