“What do you need from me, Harley?” I replied because, for the life of me, I didn’t know how to help him. I had no idea what he needed.
“I…” His voice caught in his throat. A borderline hysterical giggle fell out of him. “I think I’m broken.”
“I don’t think you’re broken—”
“I think I’m broken,” he repeated louder. “I feel… I feel sad for a woman who didn’t even love me. And I feel guilty because I haven’t seen her. I haven’t seen her in years. I couldn’t bring myself to see her. To talk to her or anything. And I keep thinking that I should’ve gone and seen her. I should’ve sucked it up and gotten over it. I should’ve… and yet… I think I’m broken because I feel… I feel…”
“Relieved?” I guessed. His head turned slightly so he could look at me. He was crying, but every conflicting emotion was written all over his pretty face. He nodded slightly. “It’s okay to feel relieved, Harley, and it doesn’t make you broken.”
“It feels like I am…”
I sighed and leaned back on my elbows as I stared out across the front lawn. A slight breeze rolled through the overgrown grass in a visible wave. All I could think of was how he’d need a riding mower… something to help tame the grass before they ended up with unwanted animals moving in on their property.
It was a distracting thought—a silly thing to pull away from stuff I’d let go of a while ago. Things I’d made peace with.Unfortunately, they were things that could help him. That alone was worth dragging back the past.
“My mom died three years ago,” I said. “To no one’s surprise, she overdosed. The only reason anyone told me was that her boyfriend needed money to have her cremated, and it wasn’t like Aidan had anything to give anyone.”
“What’d you do?” Harley asked.
“I sent the money.” I shrugged.
“Why? After everything she put you through, why?”
“Because at the end of the day, my mom was just broken, and I have learned to accept that,” I told him honestly. “Someone once told me that broken’s not a bad thing. It’s just the universe’s way of telling us that we need to change. What that change is… well, that’s up to us to figure out. And change is fucking hard. Not everyone can recognize the need for it, and not everyone can do it. And no one can make you change if you don’t want to.”
“How?” he demanded. “How do you… get okay with it without closure? My therapist and I have talked about me getting closure… and now… ”
“I gave up on closure a long time ago. It’s not something everyone gets. Sometimes people don’t change. Sometimes they don’t apologize. Sometimes they don’t even understand what they did. You can spend your whole life waiting for something that’s never going to happen… or you can decide to move forward without it.”
He stared at me for a long time, and I watched the little shifts in his expression as he worked through it.
“I don’t know how to do that,” Harley whispered. “I want to, but I don’t know how.”
“You start by choosing yourself. Even when it feels wrong. Even when it feels selfish. You decide that your peace matters more than the answers you’re never going to get. And then, you just build from there.”
He made a small sound, nodding. I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced.
“You’ve already started,” I reminded him gently. “You built a life for Aria. You got yourself in therapy. You’re trying, Harley. That’s… that’s huge. That’s you choosing yourself.”
Those blue eyes widened slightly as they filled with more tears. Reaching out, I ran my fingers through his disheveled hair, and my fingers curled around the back of his head. I leaned in to kiss his forehead, letting it linger briefly.
“You’re doing a damn good job,” I said. “I promise you that.”
I kissed him once more as I silently hoped he knew just how much I meant that because he deserved to believe it, even if it took time.
CHAPTER 118
harley
Grief wasn’t always about losing love. Sometimes, it was about losing the chance for it—the chance to be loved the way you needed, the chance to give it, and the chance to have it wanted in return. That was the part no one talked about. The way grief could show up as something strange. Not heartbreak exactly, but rather the hollow absence of something that was never fully there to begin with.
That kind of grief didn’t unravel you the same way.
I’d spent years learning how to live without my mother in the ways that mattered—the ways I needed to survive. Therapy had taught me how to name it, how to untangle the damage, how to rebuild something functional out of the pieces that held me together. I took medication to manage the depression and anxiety she’d left me with and leaned on my coping mechanism to get through the harder days. I was learning how to live with it all.
But I hadn’t made peace with it.
Some part of me had always believed there would be a moment—some kind of final conversation that would make it all make sense. That even with her declining mental state, there might be something there. Something I could hold onto. Something that would explain it all, or at least soften the blow.
