Page 31

“I can talk,” I say. My voice breaks anyway.

He grunts—not relief. Not approval.

“Then do it. Preferably before I start wondering if you’re already halfway gone.” He leans back, arms crossed, scowling at the yard. “Silence doesn’t make you strong. It makes you easy to bury.”

I breathe slow, steadying the tremor in my hands. The air tastes like metal.

“You don’t get to decide if I’m easy to bury.”

The chain stills. Just a fraction. Enough.

I turn my mug in my hands, eyes on the frost-bitten grass. “You don’t get to talk like I’m a debt.” My voice comes out level. “It wasn’t my fault he died.”

The air tightens. He goes stone-still.

“And it won’t be your fault if I do.”

A breath rips out of him, sharp, like his body forgot the order for a second.

“I choose what I become next,” I say quietly. “Not you. Not Carter. Not this rotten world.”

Silence drops heavy between us.

I finally turn my head.

“You told me I broke,” I say. “You told me to decide what I’d be with the pieces.”

His jaw locks.

“These are mine,” I finish. “And you don’t get to decide how I put myself back together.”

His knuckles bleach white around the mug. A muscle jumps near his eye—something between fury and something he’ll never name.

He doesn’t argue. That’s the first crack.

He just sits there, bleeding anger into the morning like it’s easier than saying my name.

I leave him on the porch with my words still between us and go inside to choose the one thing grief hasn’t taken from me yet.

The house wakes without asking my permission. It always does.

Floorboards pop as the cold lets go. The stove ticks from last night’s heat. The air smells like yeast and dust and that faint, permanent smoke woven into everything we own—like the walls remember every fire we ever fed just to keep the dark honest.

I sit at the table with Scarlett’s recipe card under my palm. The paper’s gone soft at the corners, flour ground into the fibers like it belongs there now.

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread.

Her handwriting loops and leans—careless, kind. Like she never believed there was time to waste on being sharp.

I can’t bring her back.

But I can make something.

I know what today is.

Malek never says it. Never marks it. But Carter used to—quiet, almost reverent. And even without asking, I’ve learned the signs. The way Malek goes tighter on this date. How he walks the fence before dawn. How he doesn’t sleep, just keeps watch until morning breaks whether it wants to or not.

Unseen. Unthanked. Still standing.