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Every time I think about walking into a room and hearing someone say his name, or worse—avoiding it—I want to scream. So I stay home.

I go to work. I smile. I reply to emails. I keep up the illusion. And then I come home and sit in the silence of my apartment. The apartment where we made plans. Where we made love. Where we laughed together like kids.

Sometimes I forget to eat. Sometimes I stare at my phone for hours, willing it to light up with his name. Willing him to break the silence I’m too afraid to break myself.

Sometimes I dream he’s here—that he never left. That we’re still whole.

And when I wake up, my fingers go straight to the rings—twisting, turning, pressing them into my skin—just to feel something. Something real. Something that still connects me to him.

Outside it’s a warm day of winter. New York hums, cars and voices and life moving like nothing happened. But in here, time stands still. The apartment doesn’t breathe anymore. It’s quiet. Too quiet.

The kind of silence that doesn’t comfort, just amplifies everything inside you—thoughts, regrets, memories. All of them screaming louder than any voice could.

I’m sitting on the floor by the window, knees pulled to my chest, wearing one of Nick’s old hoodies—the black one, soft and oversized, the one he used to steal back just so I’d ask for it again. It still smells like sea and woods and warmth and home.

Suddenly—the lock opens. A second later, the door opens.

“Okay, it’s time to rejoin the living,” Thalia announces without preamble, stepping into my living room like she owns the place.

She marches straight to the windows and rips the curtains completely open with a dramatic flourish. Sunlight floods the room like it’s trying to chase the shadows out of me.

I flinch, shielding my eyes. “You didn’t even knock.”

“I gave up knocking when you started pretending not to hear it,” she fires back, hands on hips, already moving toward my bedroom. “We are going out. And don’t even think about protesting.”

I hear her rustling through my closet, yanking hangers, opening drawers like a woman on a mission.

“I get it, Sierra. I do. You needed time. But it’s been five months. Five.”

She reappears a moment later holding an orange dress and ankle boots.

“It’s January. Christmas passed. New Year’s passed. And you sat at your parents’ dinner table like a statue. Zero reactions. Zero expressions. Like you weren’t even in the room.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I murmur, curling tighter into myself. My voice barely makes it past the lump in my throat.

“Oh, yes, you are,” she argues, tone sharper—but not cruel.

It’s the kind of sharp you use when you’re trying to wake someone from drowning.

“You needed time, and I respected that. But this? This is not living. This is hiding. You’ve lost weight, you don’t go out, you’ve skipped every family dinner. You don’t even answer your phone. Enough.”

She tosses the dress onto the couch and folds her arms like a wall I can’t climb.

“People make mistakes. What matters is how—or if—they choose to fix them. And you? You’re the most stubborn, driven, brilliant pain in the ass I know. So if you want your man back, then it’s time to show him. The way he showed you that he was all in. That he wanted you, no one else, for life.”

My chest twists. Her words hit something raw.

“Thalia…” I whisper, and my voice breaks. My heart follows. “That was before I did what I did. Before I doubted him. Before I… I don’t even know what to say to him. He probably doesn’t even believe that nothing happened between me and Colt.”

She rolls her eyes and drops onto the arm of the couch.

“Please. Colt, the Hardys, your brothers—they’ve known each other since forever. Things may not be the same, but there’s still a bond there. You saw how Colt didn’t even react when Nick punched him. If anything, he looked at him with… I don’t know. Respect. Admiration, even.”

I swallow hard. That moment replays in my mind like a scene on loop—the look in Nick’s eyes, the way Colt didn’t even flinch. Didn’t fight back. Didn’t even speak.

“Nick knows nothing happened,” she says more gently now. “That’s not what broke him. What broke him was what you believed. That you believed a lie about the man you married. That you didn’t call him. That you spent the night in someone else’s house instead of going to him.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Shame rises like a wave in my chest, hot and unforgiving. I let it crash over me.