“It does. But ending it matters too.”
I stare at my hands, my fingers unintentionally twisting in the fabric of my top.
“They sent items. Clothes that smell of them,” I say quietly.
“I gathered.”
“No notes. No speeches. Just…their scents.”
Aisling nods. “That’s not boys playing a game. That’s men trying not to lose something important.”
My throat tightens again.
“I don’t want to be stupid,” I admit. “I don’t want to forgive them just because my body reacts to them.”
“You won’t,” she says firmly. “You’re not that girl.”
Silence settles again, softer now.
“So,” she says after a moment, “what do you want?”
I think of my nest upstairs. Of the careful folding. At the spaces where they could fit.
“I want to hear them out,” I whisper. “But I don’t want to go back just because I miss them.”
“Then don’t,” she replies simply. “Make them come to you properly.”
The idea settles somewhere steady in my chest.
Not forgiveness.
Not surrender.
Conversation.
And maybe?—
Choice.
FORTY-ONE
LANI
The engine sounddoesn’t belong here.
It’s too smooth, too controlled, too expensive for the narrow private road that dips down towards the beach car park – where tyres usually crunch slow over gravel and engines struggle on the incline before cutting out. The sound alone is enough to freeze something inside me, a deep, instinctive recognition that bypasses logic.
I move to the window slowly, careful not to be seen before I’ve confirmed what my body already knows.
A black car sits at the end of Nanny D’s drive.
Immaculate.
Out of place.
It shouldn’t be there. No one comes down here unless they mean to.
The driver’s door opens.