“I’ll take over here,” he continues. “With Christian. Running things.”
A small pause. Then, quieter,
“Is that going to be okay with you?”
That catches me off guard.
“Of course it is,” I say immediately. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
His jaw tightens slightly.
“Because this world is violent,” he says. “And it’s part of what put you in that position in the first place.”
Something in my chest twists.
“Elijah,” I say softly, leaning forward slightly, “you need to stop blaming yourself for that.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t interrupt.
“That was my past,” I continue. “My ex. What he did had nothing to do with you.”
I hold his gaze.
“Even if your world touched it… he made that choice. Not you.”
There’s something almost pleading in me now. I need him to understand that. To let that go. At least a little. His expression doesn’t change much. But I see it. The shift. Small. Subtle. A nod. Then his phone rings.
The moment breaks.
He answers it without hesitation, already stepping slightly away, already shifting back into that other space.
That controlled space. That distant space. And I feel it again. That separation. That space between us that I don’t know how to close.
I exhale slowly and turn back to my laptop.
My fingers hover over the keys for a second.
Then I start typing again.
Because this, this is how I process it.
This is how I move through it.
If I stop, I feel everything all at once. And I’m not ready for that yet. So I write. And I keep writing. And I tell myself, I’m not going to lose myself again.
Not this time.
forty-nine
Liana
The apartment has been too quiet for too long.
Not silent. Elijah is here, his presence moving in and out of the room like a shadow I can feel before I see him, the low murmur of his voice sometimes breaking the stillness when he takes calls, the soft vibration of his phone against the table, the faint scrape of a chair across the floor. But none of that changes what sits underneath it.
Distance.
That is what the apartment feels like.
