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Only time would tell what that would mean for us.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Siana - 6 weeks
It was strange how foreign the home I used to spend almost every moment of my life in felt now.
I hadn’t stepped foot in it since that day when we’d gone back to file the police report.
I’d spent endless hours decorating this place, searching for items online, finding the exact right spot to place them in, then enjoying looking at the beauty I’d created.
Now, it felt like a stranger lived there as I tossed more broken dishes into the garbage pail.
Alaric was doing another trip down to recycling with my destroyed books.
He’d carefully cataloged all the titles before boxing them up, wanting to replace them in the future.
But, suddenly, my attachment to them didn’t seem too important to me anymore. For someone whose creature comforts had meant so much to her, that felt like a pretty monumental realization.
I guess because, now, I had things that meant more to me.
People who meant more to me.
Things felt just like that now. Things.
Frida was curled up in her corner of the apartment where her bed used to live, and I wondered if she missed this place, or if she’d started to consider Alaric’s house as hers now, as home.
She definitely seemed calmer there.
She would always be a reactive dog, freaking out about the mailman coming up to the house, or the lizards in her newly fenced yard. But she’d found more peace at the house in the suburbs than she ever had in the apartment in the city.
I realized… I had too.
Instead of dreading our daily walks, I found myself looking forward to them. And, sure, maybe a part of that was because I had Alaric at my side, his hand holding mine, or pressed into my lower back. But it was also because there were fewer people, less stress.
“Kinda sad I didn’t get to see it before it got destroyed,” Kylo said, making me turn to find him leaning in the doorway, a hand pressed to his stomach.
He was putting on a brave face about it, but his recovery had been a very slow process. And he had a while to go.
I was pretty sure he would always walk with a slight limp now, thanks to the damage done to his leg. But I was praying for his sake that his stomach would make a full recovery with some time.
“It was really something,” I admitted, gaze doing a sweep of the place. “But they’re just things,” I added. “They can be replaced.”
“Nah, darlin’,” he said, shaking his head. “We both know you’re building something new now.”
He wasn’t wrong about that.
It was why we were here, actually. Why we were cleaning the place out.
Because we’d had that talk.
About him not wanting me to go back.
About me being okay with that arrangement as well.
This wasn’t home anymore. It hadn’t been since the first day I landed on Alaric’s doorstep.
That was home now.
