"Storage closet. I keep some for... situations."
Situations. Like the departure of temporary houseguests. Like the systematic removal of someone who'd overstayed her welcome.
"Thanks."
He set the boxes down just inside the door and stepped back, maintaining the careful distance he'd kept since she'd started pulling away. Since everything had gotten too real and too complicated and too terrifying.
"Let me know if you need help."
"I can manage."
"I know you can."
The words hung between them, heavy with subtext.I know you can manage. I know you've been managing alone for years. I just wish you'd let me help.
But she couldn't let him help. Couldn't let him make this easier. Easier meant harder to leave, and leaving was already going to be impossible.
"Really. I've got it."
He nodded once, expression still neutral, and retreated down the hallway. She heard him in the kitchen a moment later—coffee maker gurgling, cabinets opening and closing with that precise efficiency.
Morning routine. Even now, even with everything falling apart, he maintained his routine.
That's why you don't fit, the vicious voice in her head whispered. He needs order. You are chaos. You'll only break him if you stay.
She focused on packing.
The boxes filled faster than she expected—or maybe she was working faster, desperate to get this over with. Paint supplies went into one. Clothes into another. Art supplies, books borrowed from Sam, the accumulated evidence of months spent pretending she belonged here.
Each item was a small goodbye.
By the time she'd emptied the guest room, the sun had fully risen, casting warm light through windows that had felt like home. Edie stood in the middle of the stripped space and tried to feel something other than grief.
It's just a room. Four walls and a ceiling. Nothing special.
But it was special. It was the first room she'd stayed in longer than a few weeks in years. The first room that had felt safeenough to really unpack in, to spread her chaos across, to treat like more than a temporary waystation.
Temporary, the mantra whispered. This was always temporary.
She picked up the first box and carried it to the living room.
Tarmek was waiting.
"I can help load the truck."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
They stared at each other across the carefully organized space, and Edie saw everything he wasn't saying written in the rigid line of his shoulders, the tight set of his jaw, the way his hands hung at his sides like he was physically restraining himself from reaching for her.
"Okay."
The word cost her more than it should have.
They worked in silence, moving boxes from the condo to his truck to the camper parked behind the arena. The routine was mechanical—lift, carry, set down, repeat. No conversation. No eye contact that lasted longer than a second.
The silence was suffocating.
