It wasn’t something I could wait out or talk myself out of once things went back to normal. Harper had felt it instinctively, the way kids do—recognized safety, warmth, belonging—and named it without understanding the cost of naming it.
And I couldn’t unsee it after that.
I couldn’t pretend Dani was just helping out. Couldn’t tell myself this was a circumstance or a convenience. Harper had reflected it back to me with brutal clarity: this wasn’t about filling an empty space.
It was about completing a picture I’d been avoiding.
That realization sat heavily in my chest. Not fear that Dani would leave, but fear of what staying would ask of me. Of the risk I’d spent years managing. Of the truth that love had already threaded itself into our lives, whether I was ready to claim it or not.
Harper hadn’t scared Dani by dreaming too big.
She’d scared both of us by being right.
That thought alone made the whole situation that much harder.
I tried to keep busy with dishes, laundry, and organizing Harper’s school forms, but everything I touched still had a trace of the woman who entered my life like a wildfire, fast, all at once, and unexpectedly.
Her cardigan was draped over the couch, the faint scent of her shampoo on the couch pillow she’d fallen asleep on one night when Harper insisted they have a “girls’ movie sleepover.”
I walked into the kitchen and stopped by the fridge. Harper’s latest drawing was still there: three stick figures holding hands. One tall, one small, one with curly hair. In the corner, she’d scribbledMy Family.
I traced the words with my thumb and felt my chest tighten.
After Harper went to bed, I went out to the porch again. The moon was high, the air cool, the rhythmic crash of the waves like a heartbeat.
I thought about Dani, about her nervous laugh when she said,This is crazy.About the way she’d looked at me right before she kissed me. About how gentle she’d been with Harper, even when she was tired or hurting.
And I realized something simple but certain:
After losing Elena, a dark cloud began following me, whispering blame and guilt into my ear. It told me I let her down, that I didn’t fight hard enough to get her the help she needed when things weren’t going right. And I realized I was trying to hold Dani too tight now, too.
If she needed space, I could give it to her.
Because when someone like Dani comes into your life, you don’t hold them tighter out of fear, you make room. You trust that they find their way back on their own.
So I sat there for a while before I pulled out my phone and sent a text, just five words.
Me:Thinking of you, Counselor.
Always.
And when I hit send, I finally felt the smallest hint of peace.
Because I knew, when she was ready, she’d come home.
Chapter 43
Dani
Itold myself I just needed space.
That I’d go home, clear my head, get some work done, maybe take a long bath, do something grounding. That’s what I always did when life felt too big: I retreated, threw myself into work, and found order in the middle of emotional chaos.
I had spent the drive from Huntington Beach to Anaheim on the phone with Cami. She fulfilled her best friend duties of listening to me vent and telling me my attachment wounds were showing, and that I “better go get my man”. My heart knew she was right, but my head wouldn’t stop spinning.
But by the time I unlocked my apartment door, that confidence was already starting to crumble.
My apartment was still.
