Each memory comes out a little easier than the last. His face changes as he speaks. The grief doesn’t disappear, but it shifts,making room for something else—warmth, familiarity, the echo of who they were when they were here.
He keeps going.
One detail leading to another. One memory pulling the next along. The space between us fills with them—these moments, these habits, these pieces of a life that was full and lived and shared.
I don’t interrupt. I don’t rush him. I don’t fill the gaps. I stay with him. I listen to every word, every memory, every piece he offers.
Until they aren’t just an ache sitting under his skin.
They’re here. In the air between us. In the way his face softens when he talks about them. In the space we share, filled with people I’ve never met but can almost see through him.
After another memory trails off, he glances at me, then back down, gathering the nerve. “Can we stay a bit longer?”
In the back of my mind, I register the time. We’ve been out here longer than we should have. Long enough that Maeve has probably checked the clock more than once, wondering where we are.
I nod anyway.
Because this matters more. Becausehematters more. Because this moment—him sitting here, open in a way he’s probably never allowed himself before—matters more than anything waiting inside.
He watches me for a second, checking, needing to see it in my face. Then he eases, and moves. His fingers find my hand, gentle, guiding it down from where it rests against his cheek. He gathers both of my hands into his, bringing them together, enclosing them between his palms.
His hands are warm. They close around mine completely, covering them fully, creating a sense of calm instead of confinement.
There’s care in it.
It runs through every part of what he’s doing—through the way his hands stay around mine, through the way his fingers adjust just enough to keep contact without overwhelming it, through the quiet decision to stay exactly here and nowhere else.
He isn’t reaching for more. He isn’t taking.
He’s just here with me.
That hits my chest, pulling tight in a way I don’t expect.
We stay there.
His hands around mine. My fingers resting within his.
The air between us is full—thick with everything he’s shared, everything I’ve taken in, everything that sits between us now without needing to be spoken again.
Nothing feels unfinished. Nothing feels like it needs to be filled. Time keeps moving somewhere outside of this, but it doesn’t reach us here.
There’s no pull to move. No reason to fill the space with anything else.
Just this.
Just him, here.
Just me, here with him.
We let it stay exactly as it is.
Chapter Twenty: Nora
It’s been a week of shocks.
The first one comes during one of our fifteen-minute breaks.
Kieran arrives a little late, his steps light against the pavement. He pulls out his chair and, without thinking about it, nudges it slightly to the side before sitting, leaving a narrow gap between us.
