For a few seconds, I stayed in the driver’s seat with both hands on the wheel.
There was no version of the next few hours where I came out clean. I had waited too long. I had made choices in the space between loneliness and wanting and called some of them inevitable because that made them easier to survive.
But Olivia deserved more than a quiet marriage ending in pieces she had to discover herself.
She deserved my face. My voice. The truth, even if I couldn’t give her every detail without turning honesty into cruelty.
Inside, Tiny hit the door before I got my key in the lock.
“Back,” I said through the wood.
He responded by snorting directly into the seam.
When I opened it, he greeted me like I’d been missing for a decade, massive body shoving into my legs, tail hammering the wall. I bent and put both hands on his head, pressing my forehead briefly between his ears.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I know.”
The house smelled faintly of coffee and the dinner I’d made the night before. Jace’s travel mug was gone. His bag was gone. His shoes weren’t by the door. No obvious trace of him remainedexcept one strand of dark hair on the sleeve of the couch and the mangled duck abandoned beside Tiny’s bed.
I picked it up.
Tiny took it gently from my hand and carried it to the living room, then circled back as if deciding I required supervision.
I moved through the house doing unnecessary things. Straightened the mail. Rinsed a mug. Checked the guest bathroom even though Olivia never used it. Put the dish towel back where it belonged after realizing I’d been holding it for no reason.
Then I stopped.
My life was not going to become more honest because the counters were clean.
I sat in the living room, not on the couch where Jace had leaned against me two nights ago, but in the chair across from it. Tiny lowered himself onto my feet with a groan and rested his head against my shin.
My phone showed seven-thirty-six.
Then seven-forty.
Then seven-fifty-two.
A message came through at eight-oh-three.
Landed. Waiting on bag. See you soon.
I read it once and set the phone face down on the arm of the chair.
The house was too quiet after that. No television. No rink noise. No Jace filling space with motion and half-finished thoughts. Just the furnace clicking on, Tiny breathing against my leg, and the slow approach of the conversation I should have had before anyone else got hurt this badly.
Headlights swept across the front windows.
Tiny lifted his head.
A car door closed outside, and a minute later Olivia’s key slid into the lock.
Chapter 28
Chapter 28
DECLAN
Olivia came in with a suitcase, a laptop bag, and the tired posture of someone who had spent too many hours making other people feel organized.
