“I’m scared,” I whispered finally, when the crying had subsided to hiccups and shaky breaths.
“I know.”
“What if I can’t do this?”
“You can.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re still here.” His voice was quiet but absolute. “You’re still fighting. That’s how I know. And you told me you can do hard things.”
We stayed on the phone after that, the silence between us comfortable in a way I didn’t expect. I could hear him breathing, slow and steady, and it anchored me somehow. Made the darkness of my bedroom feel less suffocating.
I talked sometimes. Rambling thoughts that didn’t make much sense—about the hormones and the waiting and the way my body felt like it didn’t belong to me anymore. About Phillip and the divorce and how I’d promised myself I’d never let anyone make me feel worthless again, but here I was, feeling exactly that.
Amai listened. Didn’t interrupt. Didn’t try to fix it or tell me I was wrong. Just listened, his breathing a constant reminder that I wasn’t alone in this.
“Thank you,” I said at some point, my voice thick with exhaustion. “For staying on the phone.”
“Where else would I be?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. My eyelids were getting heavy, my body finally giving in to the exhaustion I’d been fighting all day. The phone was warm against my ear, Amai’s breathing a steady rhythm that pulled me toward sleep.
“Truth,” he said quietly.
“Mm?”
“Close your eyes.”
I did. The darkness behind my eyelids was softer now, less threatening.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and his voice was the last thing I heard before sleep pulled me under. “You hear me? I’m not going anywhere.”
I tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. My mind was drifting, consciousness slipping away in slow waves. I was dimly aware of the phone still pressed to my ear, of Amai’s presence on the other end of the line, solid and unwavering.
I drifted in and out after that. Sometimes I’d surface just enough to hear him—the quiet sound of him moving, the faint rustle of fabric, his breathing steady and even. Then I’d slip back under, pulled down by exhaustion and the strange comfort of knowing he was still there.
At some point—I don’t know how long—I heard him say something soft. Too soft for me to make out the words. Then there was a pause, long and weighted, before the line went dead.
But by then I was already asleep, the phone still clutched in my hand, his absence somehow less lonely than it should have been.
Because he’d stayed.
For forty-five minutes in the middle of the night, Amai Landry had stayed on the phone with me while I fell apart and then fell asleep.
And that meant something.
I just didn’t know what yet.
Chapter 14
AMAI
Ididn’t sleep after I hung up.
Didn’t even try.
I sat in my office with the lights off, staring at the city through the floor-to-ceiling windows as dawn broke over New Orleans. The skyline turned from black to gray to gold, and I watched it happen without moving, my phone still in my hand.
