Ididn’t cry when I left.
That fact followed me like something unfinished, like my body hadn’t caught up to what had already broken. I shut the door gently. I was careful with it in a way that felt almost absurd, as if noise might somehow justify what had just happened. The click of the lock landed heavier than it should have—final, unavoidable. I walked down the steps the way I walked into courtrooms: head high, shoulders back, composed enough to convince anyone watching that nothing inside me had shifted.
By the time I reached my car, my hands were shaking.
I sat there for a moment, keys useless in my hand. The house loomed behind me like it hadn’t just cracked something open. It looked the same—white siding, neat porch, curtains pulled wide. Light still poured in as if nothing had changed.
That was what hurt the most.
The house didn’t look wounded.
I started the engine before I could think too hard and pulled away. The road blurred faster than I could ground myself. My thoughts looped sharp and relentless, never clean enough to resolve. Instead they felt like fragments replaying, out of order.
I didn’t go home.
I didn’t trust myself with walls.
Instead, I drove toward the coast. Muscle memory took over where my mind couldn’t. It carried me somewhere that didn’t belong to anyone else. The ocean had become that place while I stayed at Logan’s—early mornings before Harper woke, evenings when the house felt too full of things no one said out loud. It was the only space where I didn’t have to be useful to exist.
I parked crooked, but didn’t care enough to fix it, kicking my shoes off before the engine had even fully died.
The sand was still warm beneath my feet, shifting and soft, grounding me in a way nothing else had all day. I let it pull me in, toes sinking until I found resistance beneath it. Something solid enough to hold me up when everything else felt uncertain. I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared at the horizon. The sun slipped lower, painting the water in muted gold and bruised pink.
My chest tightened slowly, like my body was finally catching up.
This is Elena’s house.
The words came back quieter now, but heavier.
I hadn’t thrown away anything. Hadn’t put away her photos or her clothes or the pieces of her that still lived in every room. I hadn’t tried to erase her.
All I’d done was open the curtains.
Let light in.
I swallowed hard, pressing my forehead against my knees. The realization settled deeper than I wanted. I liked things to work. Somewhere along the way, helping had become how I earned space. It was proof I belonged, that I was worth keeping around.
If you fix what’s broken, you get to stay.
And when I couldn’t—
That was the worst part.
Getting it wrong. Hurting someone without meaning to. I’d built my entire adult life around competence and intention—law school, public defense, showing up prepared, caring deeply but correctly. There were rules for handling hard things without making them worse.
Grief didn’t follow any of them.
I’d walked straight into Logan’s with the confidence of someone who believed kindness was always welcome. Like warmth couldn’t burn if it came from the right place. But now, sitting there with the ocean stretching endlessly in front of me, I had to face the possibility that my need to help wasn’t always selfless. That sometimes it was just another way of reassuring myself that I mattered.
Did I step in for him, or because I couldn’t sit with my own discomfort?Maybe my warmth wasn’t always a gift. Maybe sometimes it was pressure. A silent demand for someone to meet me there before they were ready.
I let out a slow breath, watching the tide roll in, steady and unmoved by any of it. I envied that—its ability to exist without adjusting itself for anyone else.
I thought about Logan standing in the doorway. The way his shoulders had locked, the way his expression shifted—not anger, not cruelty—just something rawer. Something afraid.
Fear had sharpened his words.
And mine had come back just as fast.
