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I knew that was ridiculous. She was a fictional character I’d made up years ago in a fit of insomnia and panic. But there she was on the page, staring back at me with those big, inked eyes, and if she’d had a mouth that worked, I was pretty sure she would’ve told me to get it together.

I was at my table, inking in scenes I’d penciled before I’d seen Zarek. Mindless work, that almost forced me to think. The last thing I wanted to do. I looked down at Seris, who was really my other half. Okay, Zoe was my other half. Seris was my fear, my aspirations, my turmoil… my hope.

Seris, the girl who couldn’t speak.

Seris, who could see everything coming and still couldn’t make herself heard.

I’d given her that silence on purpose, thinking it would make her brave.

Now it mostly made her feel a little too familiar.

“I get it,” I muttered at the drawing. “You’re disappointed in me.”

Her eyes, wide and wary, stared back.

It wasn’t that I didn’t talk. God knew I talked. To my therapist. To my sisters. To my editor about deadlines. I’d talked to Zarek, too, or at least I’d tried. But my words had ended up just sliding off him. Like he stood behind thick glass.

I might as well have been Seris—shouting in my head while nothing made it across.

I dropped the pen and got on my feet and stretched, arching my back and neck, without easing the ache in my shoulders. The ceiling in the apartment was the same stained popcorn texture it had been when I moved in. The faint hum of my neighbor’s TV bled through the wall—a game show, maybe. Or some true crime documentary. It was hard to tell.

Saturday was the barbecue.

That thought marched across my brain like it had been doing every hour on the hour.

Trenda swore up and down that Simon was going to get Zarek there. “Trust me,” she’d said. “If anyone can guilt-trip a stubborn man into showing up for family, it’s my husband.”

I loved her optimism.

I was also willing to bet my last good pen that there was no way in hell Simon was going to succeed.

The image of Zarek at a barbecue—standing in the backyard with a beer in his hand, laughing at something Drake said, letting Bella pester him for ride-alongs—hurt in a way I didn’t have edges for. It felt like remembering a movie I’d watched once and wasn’t sure actually existed anymore.

“Doesn’t matter,” I told the ceiling. “He goes or not, you’re going.”

The words landed with a dull thump, but they were true.

Because that was the thing, wasn’t it? I kept waiting for him to make a move. To open a door. To say, “Okay, this is how we fix it.” I’d walked out, then I’d walked back in, and somewhere in the middle I’d decided I was ready to fight for us again.

Except he wasn’t there yet.

He hadn’t called. Not once. Not even to ask if I got home safe. I wasn’t sure which hurt more — the silence or the possibility that he needed it.

Or maybe he was, and he was just buried under all that pain and guilt and bone-deep exhaustion. Either way, I couldn’t keep doing this halfway thing—I’d left two messages since leaving, and he hadn’t returned my calls. He was making it pretty damn clear he didn’t want me around. And I’d give him that play… for now.

In the meantime was time to start living again. Fully. And that meant showing my face in Jasper Creek.

I was done holing myself up in this little apartment like some injured flower pressed between the pages of a book. Yes, I had been broken. Absolutely, I’d been wrecked.

But I’d survived.

And if I’d survived, I was damn well going to thrive.

Even if thriving, today, just meant putting on real clothes and going into Jasper Creek without using the back alley entrances.

I went to my closet. Calling it a closet was generous—it was more like a determined cupboard—but it held enough pieces of my life to do the job. I thumbed through the hangers, bypassing the oversized sweatshirts and leggings that had been my unofficial mourning uniform.

It was warm out. Spring had actually decided to stick this week. That helped.