The rain kept at the balcony. The clock did its job.
Around dawn, the apartment turned the color of dish water. Every surface went from sharp to smudged as the morning rays fought their way through the closed curtains. His face looked younger when he slept and I hated it for a second because it made me want to forgive him faster than was good for either of us. I stood and walked to the kitchen. I had left my sobriety coin on the counter and I palmed it, running my fingers over the familiar edges around the rim. I couldn’t go back there.
When I went back to the living room, he’d turned on his side and curled a little like his ribs remembered something his mind refused to. I touched his shoulder and he startled, then settled. “Jackson,” I said.
He didn’t open his eyes.
“If you won’t fight for yourself,” I said, and the steadiness in my voice came from someone I didn’t recognize, “I can’t keep fighting for both of us.”
He made a small sound that wasn’t a word. I waited. A tiny, silly part of me hoped he would wake up. Beg for forgiveness. Promise to change. Something. But his breath just evened out again. I watched his fingers twitch and thought of the first night he’d slept in my bed like it might explode under him. I thought about the fire he’d ignited under my skin when he touched me. I fought back the tears as I remembered the way he’d said my name like a promise. About how he’d made me feel safe, loveable, and cherished when I thought that part of me had been broken forever.
I went to the bedroom and pulled out his duffel, putting clothes in it without folding them. I put his toothbrush in the pocket with the dog tag he never wore, and then I took the dog tag out and set it on the table beside my coin. They looked wrong together and exactly right.
My phone was on the charger. Hannah’s name sat near the top of recent calls because fate had a sense of humor. I tapped it. The line rang twice.
“Morning, darling.”
“Hannah.” The word came out half sob, half question.
“It’s ok,” she said. Not a question. She knew. “I’m coming.”
The sun climbed a half inch. The rain stopped like someone remembered to turn off the hose. He slept through the knock that wasn’t a knock, just the handle turning because she still had a spare key.
Hannah came in with her hair pulled back and the expression of a woman who had already buried too much and refused to do it again. She looked at me first, not him. I handed her the bag. She took it without looking inside. “Do you want me to wake him?”
“I don’t think I can hear his voice right now,” I said, and that was the truest thing I’d said all week.
“I’ve got him.” She put a hand on my arm in a way that didn’t ask me to crumble. “I’ll call when—” She changed her mind about the sentence and let it end there.
She went to the couch and crouched. She touched his shoulder the way I had, light but enough to carry meaning. He flinched and then sat up with the guilty look of a kid caught sleeping in church. He saw her, and confusion washed over his face before the other thing did—the thing like a weather front. Understanding. Resignation. Shame.
“What did I do?” he started.
“Enough,” Hannah said. “Get your shoes.”
He looked at me. I stared at the window and counted the streaks the rain had left on the glass. He stood, didn’t meet my eyes. Hannah picked up the duffel and didn’t say anything else because there was nothing left in the room that language could fix.
At the door, he paused like he’d forgotten his wallet. I knew if I turned, I would undo whatever resolve I had managed to build in the last hour. I stared at the table instead. My nostrils flared. My jaw clenched. My eyes burned.Don’t you dare cry.My coin shone a little in the watery light. The dog tag didn’t.
The door opened. Closed. The hallway gave back the sound of their footsteps, then swallowed it. The truck outside coughed and settled. A second later it backed out. The tires made that wet hiss as they rolled over the last of the rain.
The roof held. The couch sat in the same place it always sat. The cups waited on the counter. The light on the ceiling shifted and didn’t mean anything yet. I sat down at the table and put both hands flat on the wood. I didn’t touch the coin or the tag. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t cry. I listened to the quiet until it wasn’t quiet anymore, just a thing with weight. I’d buried him once and walked away with a folded flag and a hole that didn’tunderstand geometry. Now I stared at a shut door and felt the same ache rearrange my lungs.
No sirens. No speeches. Just the sound of a car that had already turned the corner, and a room that remembered how to be empty.
Chapter Thirty-Six
? Jackson ?
Hannah didn’t say a word the whole way back. Morning light came in low and gray over the fields, turning the frost on the ditch weeds into cheap glitter. Her old Suburban rattled like it had loose change somewhere under the dash. She drove the limit, both hands on the wheel, jaw set. I started to speak once—something small and defensive and pathetic likeit’s not what it looked like—and she cut me off without turning her head.
We pulled into the gravel lot and the clubhouse came up out of the cold like a freight ship—blocky, stubborn, familiar. The sign over the door needed paint. The flag needed the wind. A couple bikes were already lined along the front like dogs at a back door, chrome dull under the morning cloud cover. She parked. I reached for the handle. Her voice, finally softer, found me before I got out.
“You smell like whiskey and regret,” she said. “Go shower.”
That was it. No lecture. No pity. Inside, the bar still held onto last night—fried food and bleach, a lemon wedge turned brown on a saucer, the jukebox quiet like it had been scolded. I kept my eyes down, moved fast through the hall to the back showers, and let the hottest water the plumbing could manage burn me clean. The stink of cheap liquor came off my skin like a confession. When I was done I stood there with my head against the tile until the water started to cool, counted to thirty on my breath, andmade a choice. I got out before it could turn cold enough to feel like punishment.
By the time I came back to the main room in a clean shirt and my hair still damp, Hannah was at the stove, making breakfast. Maria was behind the bar with a coffee pot like a weapon. Her sweater sleeves were shoved to her elbows, the small gold cross at her throat catching light from the neon beer sign that never turned off. She saw me. She didn’t blink.
