Tears filled her eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“You crossed a line.”
She flinched. “I crossed a line by opening curtains? By wanting this place to breathe again?” Dani demanded.
“You crossed a line by forgetting whose life this is.”
Her breath hitched. “And you crossed one by making me feel like I’m disposable,” she said, voice shaking.
That stopped me, causing pings of regret to lodge themselves in my chest. I never meant to leave her feeling that way.
“I don’t know where I stand with you,” she went on, her voice breaking. “One minute you want me here, wantme. The next, I’m an intruder. I don’t know what you want from me, and I can’t keep guessing which version of you I’m going to get.”
Her words hung in the space between us. For a split second, something desperate and wordless pushed against my anger. The ache beneath my ribs flared,but the hurt was louder, tangled up with things I couldn’t say.
“I was trying to be here,” she said softly. “Not to replace her. Not to fix you. Just… to exist alongside you.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
“I should go,” Dani whispered.
Dani looked at me one last time, eyes searching, waiting for me to say something.
I didn’t respond. Regret flashing through me, raw and unexpected. For a second, I almost reached for her—to take it back, to tell her I meant what I said, that I wanted her, I just didn’t know how to want her without feeling like I was betraying what I had promised Elena. But the words never made it out. Pride held me still, and she turned away before I could force them past it.
The door shut behind her with a final click.
And for the first time since Elena died, I realized the darkness I’d been protecting wasn’t preserving her at all. Sunlight poured over my hands where they rested on the back of the chair, warm and insistent.
It was the same sunlight Dani had let in, the same gentle light that softened her edges and made the rooms feel alive again.
For once, I let it touch me. In the hush after Dani’s leaving, I let it in, wishing she were still here, wishing I had reached for that warmth before it slipped away.
It was just keeping me alone.
???
I stood in the doorway long after she left.
The house was still too bright.
Sunlight poured in through every window, as if to prove something, catching on the hardwood floors, the picture frames, the edges of furniture that had spent years tucked into shadow. The curtains were tied back neatly, the way Dani always did things carefully and intentionally, like she believed light could fix more than it broke.
I hated it.
I hated that my chest felt hollow, not relieved.
I’d wanted quiet. Control. Familiar darkness. And now all I could hear was the echo of the door closing and the way her voice had sounded when she said she should go.
You crossed a line.The words tasted bitter now.
My gaze stumbled on the chair leg, where a nick in the wood still showed from the day we tried to move the old couch—when she laughed, and I swore, and the thing was heavier than both of us together. The memory flickered up, intrusive and unwanted, making the room feel as if it were holding its breath.
I reached for it without thinking.
The yarn was still uneven where she’d dropped a stitch and never fixed it. I remembered teasing her about it once.
It gives it character,she’d said, smiling without looking up.Not everything needs to be perfect, Logan.
