“Are you sure about this?” I’d asked her a week ago, holding my breath, afraid of what her answer might be.
She’d smiled at me then, soft and hesitant but full of something I could only hope was love. “It’s time, Haydn. We’re ready.”
Those words hit me like stopping the sharpest slap shot of my career. We’re ready.
And now, as I move around her apartment, carefully stacking boxes and wrapping her framed photographs, I can feel it. The signs that this is right. That we’re ready.
She walks in from the bedroom, her hair tied up in a messy bun, cheeks flushed from packing. There’s a smudge of dust on her jawline, and she’s hugging a box close to her chest like it’s no big deal, even though she’s been at this for hours. When she sees me standing there like a useless idiot, just staring at her, she smirks.
“You planning to help, or are you going to supervise from there?” she teases, arching a brow.
“I’ll take that to the car,” I say quickly, stepping forward. “How many more boxes?” Please let there be just one. Just one more box, and I can take her home.
“One more,” she says with a dramatic sigh, rolling her eyes like I’ve been slacking this entire time. But there’s no edge to it. Just that softness I’ve come to crave from her, the way she lets her guard down when it’s just us. She sets the box down, brushing her hands against her jeans before stepping closer.
My heart stumbles, like it always does when she’s near. She doesn’t even have to try—it’s the way she moves, the way she looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world. This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for, the moment I’ve been holding out for since the day she said “yes.”
“Are you nervous?” I ask, my voice quieter now.
“A little,” she admits, her gaze lifting to meet mine. Her eyes are clear, but there’s something underneath—something that tells me leaving this place isn’t as easy as she’s pretending it is. “Moving out and saying goodbye has never been my favorite part.”
I reach for her, pulling her gently into my arms. She comes willingly, and I press a kiss to her forehead, lingering there for a second longer than I probably should.
“It’s not goodbye,” I whisper against her skin. “You’re just fifteen minutes from here. And I promise, first thing when we get home, I’ll take you to the pool.”
“The pool, huh?” she says, tilting her head to look up at me, her lips quirking in that way that drives me insane. “I’m not sure where I packed my swimsuit.”
“No suit needed, baby,” I murmur, my voice dropping just enough to make her blush.
“You only think of sex, Wes.” She smacks my chest lightly, but her laughter bubbles up, soft and unguarded.
“With a beauty like you, always.” I grin at her, watching the tension melt away, even if just for a moment.
This is it. The start of something new, something we’ve been building toward for years. I’ve waited so long to have her with me, to build a life together, and for the first time in forever, I’m not afraid of what’s next.
Because she’s here. And we’re doing this together.
Nothing can go wrong, right?
Chapter Two
Ophelia
I still rememberthe first time I moved. I was twelve, and Mom had been gone for two years. Her absence wasn’t just something we felt—it was everywhere. It clung to the walls of our old house, to the silence at the dinner table, to every piece of furniture that still smelled like her perfume. Packing up wasn’tabout fresh starts or new beginnings. It wasn’t hopeful. It was survival.
Dad couldn’t handle it anymore, I think. Or maybe he didn’t know how to handle us—me and my brother, two kids looking at him like he had all the answers when he barely had the strength to get out of bed most days.
He told us the move would be good for us, that we needed a change. But even then, at twelve, I knew the truth: we weren’t moving toward something. We were running. Running from the memories, from the life we’d built with her, from the echoes of her voice that wouldn’t stop bouncing around the house.
I remember watching Dad pack her favorite books into a box. He didn’t cry—he rarely did. But his hands shook as he taped the box shut. And when he thought no one was looking, he sat on the edge of her side of the bed, his head in his hands, like he was carrying something far too big for him to bear.
Back then, I didn’t understand how grief can hollow a person out, how it can steal parts of you that you didn’t even know you needed to survive. But I saw it in him, in the way his voice softened when he said her name, in the way he tried so hard to keep it together for us.
Movingthat time wasn’t just packing boxes. It was like ripping open wounds that hadn’t healed, shoving them into the trunk of a car, and driving away with them. I hated it. I hated leaving the only house I’d ever known, even if it hurt to stay there. I hated that we were leaving her behind, like we were erasing her somehow. And more than anything, I hated that I didn’t feel ready to let go of the life we had before.
Now, years later, moving still feels the same. It’s like digging through pieces of myself I wasn’t ready to uncover.
Memories I thought were long buried resurface, vivid and unrelenting, refusing to stay hidden. I open a box, and suddenly I’m twelve again, staring at the same pain I thought I’d outgrown. It’s like the past doesn’t just live in your mind—it lives in your things, in the corners of a photograph, in the words scrawled on a note you forgot you kept.
