Because everything else felt like it was slipping through my hands again.
Because Harlan fucking Gray, this man who said he loved me, had turned on me like every other disappointment dressed as stability.
Three weeks ago, he made coffee and kissed my shoulder like it meant something.
And tonight he looked me in the eye and chose silence.
Chose distance.
Then blamed the version of me I’ve spent my whole damn life trying not to become.
Jaded. Bitter. Angry.
He said I was always looking for the cracks.
What he didn’t understand was I had to.
Because when you’ve spent enough time inside broken things, you learn to recognize them before they collapse again.
Remi knocked once and came in without waiting for an answer. She always did that when she knew I was unravelling, walking into the middle of the mess without flinching.
She took one look at me, sitting on the floor with a half-drunk glass of wine and a trash bag full of takeout containers I didn’t remember us ordering, and said, “You know, you don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend he didn’t gut you.”
“I’m not pretending,” I said. “I’m compartmentalizing.”
She sank onto the floor beside me. “That sounds healthy.”
“It’s fine,” I muttered. “I’m fine.”
She grabbed the bottle that sat beside my glass and took a sip, looking around. “You just sanitized the light switches with a vengeance usually reserved for exorcisms.”
I looked down at my wine. It wasn’t funny. But it kind of was.
“I let him in,” I whispered. “I fuckinglet him in, Remi. I told him everything. Things I’ve never said out loud. And he, he just threw it all back like it was a weapon he’d been waiting to use.”
Remi didn’t flinch. She just nodded, like she understood in a way few people ever could.
“I’m so mad at myself,” I said. “I swore I wouldn’t fall for anyone like that again. Iknewbetter.”
“Of course you did,” she said gently. “But knowing better doesn’t mean we stop hoping, dreaming and trying.”
My phone buzzed on the counter. I didn’t have to check to know who it was.
“I’m not answering,” I said.
“Good.”
I looked at her. “Good?”
She shrugged. “You don’t have to forgive him. But you do have to survive him.”
That cracked something open. Not enough to cry. But enough to sting. Remi leaned back against the cabinets and let her head thunk against the wood, taking another sip straight from the bottle. “We’restill young, Ava. We’ve still got time. Maybe there’s a needle in this haystack of emotional illiteracy masquerading as men.”
I snorted. “Remi...”
