Inside me, everything is quiet.Not peaceful quiet, but the kind that comes after a car wreck, after an engine explodes and there’s ringing in your ears and you can’t hear the screams or sirens.
I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.I don’t know if leaving is strength or fear.
I only know that if I stay, I’ll spend every day hoping Grayson Sparkks finally decides I’m worth fighting for, and I can’t survive like that.
Chapter 42
Grayson
I criedwhen I got home.
I barely made it through the drive home. I was so out of it that I ran a red light, stopped halfway through the intersection as I slammed on my brakes, then realized it was safer to carry on.
I managed to get all the way to my bed before I broke.
It was quiet, obviously, because my daughter was asleep down the hall. But it was bad because Carly is not.
This morning, my eyes feel gritty and swollen. My chest feels hollowed out, like someone reached inside me with both hands and scooped out whatever used to keep me upright. I barely slept. When I did, I dreamed about the bell over the cafe door, about the cold air rushing in, about Carly stepping back from me like it was dangerous to not.
But for the first time in weeks, I swim.
The pool is cold enough to make my body lock up for the first lap. I haven't bothered turning on the heating for it in weeks. But again and again, I cut through the water until my arms burn andmy lungs ache, until my brain finally goes quiet for more than two consecutive seconds.
It doesn’t fix anything.
After, I shower, shave, put on actual clothes instead of the same sweatpants I’ve been haunting this house in for weeks.
I sit at the kitchen table, staring into a cup of coffee I made ten minutes ago but haven’t touched.
The house is still. Morning light spills pale and gold across the counters, catching on the stainless steel, the glass doors, the little pink cup Penelope left upside down by the sink last night. Everything looks too disgustingly normal for the way I feel.
I hear her before I see her.
Soft footsteps, a sleepy little shuffle.When I look up, Penelope is standing in the kitchen doorway wearing her unicorn pajamas, hair mashed on one side, Daddy Bear clutched under her arm by his neck like he, too, had a long night.
Her eyes are barely open. “Daddy?”
“Morning, bug,” I say, and my voice sounds so raw that she notices.
She frowns at me, instantly a little more awake. “Are you sick?”
“No.” I try to smile. It doesn’t land. “Come here.”
She crosses the kitchen without hesitation and climbs into my lap with the boneless determination of a child who has never once considered whether she is digging a kneecap or elbow into me. Daddy Bear gets wedged between my ribs and her chest. She smells like peanut butter and strawberry shampoo.
I wrap both arms around her and drop my face to her hair.
For a second, I have to close my eyes.
“Daddy?” she mumbles against my shirt.
“Yeah?”
“What happened with Carly?”
The question hits exactly where I have no armor left.I hold her a little tighter, careful not to squeeze too hard. “We talked yesterday.”
She pulls back enough to look at me. “Did you fix it?”
