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“Sterling.”

I lifted my hands innocently and moved closer while she sat cross-legged on the bed with the box in her lap. Her fingers tapped nervously against the cardboard for a second before she finally opened it.

At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. It looked like just random things.

A folded napkin.

An old motel keycard.

One of my black shirt buttons.

My confusion must’ve shown because her cheeks pinked immediately.

“I know it’s weird,” she rushed out. “I just…started keeping things.”

She reached into the box and pulled out the napkin first, unfolding it carefully. There was a faded ketchup sauce stain in one corner. “This is from lunch at The Hollow the first day,” she said softly. “You got distracted staring at me and dropped sauce everywhere.”

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did.”

I huffed a quiet laugh, but something in my chest was already starting to feel too big.

She picked up the button next, rubbing her thumb over it absentmindedly. “This fell off your flannel at the carnival,” she murmured. “You didn’t notice, so I kept it.”

Then she reached deeper into the box and pulled out a pillowcase.

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that from the guest bedroom?”

She nodded shyly and I swallowed hard.

“I know this sounds silly,” she said with a nervous little laugh. “But after everything with David and…everything after…I think part of me stopped believing good things were real. So I started keeping proof.”

Fucking hell. I sat down beside her slowly, unable to take my eyes off the box. There were more things inside.

Movie ticket stubs. One of the cheap plastic rings from the gas station she’d laughed herself breathless over. A receipt from Dot’s where I’d drawn a smiley face beside the tip because she’d been glaring at me the entire meal.

Tiny pieces of us.

Tiny pieces of me.

“You kept all this?” I asked quietly.

Sienna ducked her head a little. “It’s possible I’m emotionally attached to garbage.”

I huffed out a laugh, feeling a little bit like I was having a heart attack from how full my chest felt.

My mother used to tell me there were people in the world who would only ever see the worst parts of someone once they knew where to look. That eventually the darkness outweighed everything else.

But Sienna had looked directly at mine and started collecting pieces anyway.

I reached out and touched the motel keycard with my thumb before looking back at her.

“You kept proof of me,” I said softly.

Her eyes lifted to mine. “Yeah.”

I slid my hand around the back of her neck and pulled her toward me until our foreheads touched.