She’s gone.
I winced.
I hadn’t meant it like that. I hadn’t meant that she didn’t matter. I’d meant he didn’t have to stop living to honor her.
But intention didn’t soften the impact.
I pulled my phone out when it buzzed, my thumb hovering over Cami’s name before I stopped. I could call her. She’dunderstand this instinct immediately—the need to fix, to smooth things over, to carry the weight before it settled. She’d tell me I wasn’t wrong for caring, that grief didn’t come with instructions.
But I already knew what she’d say:You can’t keep carrying everyone.
And I knew she’d already spent the day doing exactly that for someone else.
So I put the phone away because I could sit with this. And even if it felt like I couldn’t. I needed to learn how to. Because beneath the embarrassment, beneath the ache, there was something else I couldn’t avoid anymore.
I hadn’t just been helping; I had been falling.
Subtly, gradually, and without asking permission.
In the smallest moments, the ones that didn’t look like anything from the outside. Like the night I found him standing in the kitchen at two in the morning, refrigerator light spilling across his face, exhaustion softening the edges he tried so hard to hold in place. Yet in that moment, he offered me a knowing smile, more concerned about what kept me up than the cause of his sleepless nights.
That was when I loved him most.
Not when he was steady, or when he wasn’t. And I’d done the one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do again. I’d fallen for someone who wasn’t ready to let anyone in, to choose me.
The sun slipped lower as the sky cooled, and I stayed there, letting the hurt settle without turning it into something to solve. Letting it exist without trying to fix it.
Logan would leave again soon. Another trip, more distance between us. And I couldn’t keep standing in the doorway hoping time would change something he hadn’t chosen.
I needed to step back now, before my need to get it right turned into losing myself in the process.
I brushed the sand from my arms and stood, feet still bare, grounding myself one last time.
I wasn’t angry with him.
But I couldn’t keep offering care in a way that erased me.
Not even for love.
I took one last look at the water, then turned back toward the Bronco. My spine was straight, my heart bruised but intact. For a moment, I thought about the house again and the light still pouring in through open curtains.
And realized—
I could carry that light with me.
I hadn’t failed.
I’d just learned, again, that wanting to help wasn’t the same as being allowed to.
And that sometimes, getting it wrong was the only way to finally be honest about what you wanted.
Chapter 31
Logan
Another week in Florida down.
Another red-eye home.
