His fists clench as if remembering. “Over and over. Hard enough to split my knuckles open. They bled everywhere.” He shakes his head slowly. “And I didn’t feel a thing.”
A broken laugh escapes him. “Not a single ounce of pain.” His eyes lift to mine. “Because what I felt inside was so much worse.”
Tears fall down my face as I walk toward him. I reach up and cup his face in my hands. He looks completely shattered.
And I kiss him, soft, steady. When I pull back, I keep my hands on his face.
“Dominic,” I whisper. “It’s not your fault.”
He shakes his head.
But I hold him there.
My thumb wipes away the tears on his cheek. “You were scared. You were human. And none of that makes you a monster.”
His arms wrap around me suddenly, he pulls me tightly against him and buries his face in my shoulder as he cries. The kind of crying that comes from carrying something too heavy for too long.
And I hold him.
Just like he held me.
The wind moves through the oak tree above us. Leaves fall softly into the yard, one lands near our feet. Another drifts slowly through the air.
And standing there beneath the quiet rustle of branches…
With the truth finally spoken aloud…
It feels like the season of our lives has finally changed.
CHAPTER 28
Us
The house is quiet after Dominic leaves. The kind of silence that makes every small sound echo louder than it should. I stand in the kitchen for a moment after the door closes behind him, listening to the faint hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of a car passing somewhere down the street.
Life continues.
Because it always does.
Even when yours feels like it stopped. Earlier, I called Andrew and asked for a few days off. He didn’t really protest.
“I figured you might need it,” he said gently. “You haven’t taken any time since what happened.”
Since Clara.
The words sat heavy between us.
Because the truth is… I didn’t take time off.
I worked, I showed up, I answered emails, pretended everything was normal, pretended the ground under my life hadn’t collapsed and the strange thing about pretending something didn’t happen…
Is that eventually the world agrees with you. If you act like it’s normal long enough, people stop questioning it. Dominic leaves for work notlong after. We don’t say much. He kisses my forehead softly before he goes. Like I might shatter if he holds on too tightly.
Then the door closes. And the house becomes still again. I walk upstairs slowly. Dominic’s office door is half open. The room smells faintly like paper and coffee and something familiar that feels like safety.
I sit down at his desk. My fingers slide open the drawer. The diary is exactly where it has always been. Waiting. I take it out. The leather cover is worn from being opened so many times from hands that belong to us. I flip through the pages slowly. Era’s handwriting fills them.
Little pieces of her life. Her love for Dominic. Her hopes. Her spark. Then I reach the first blank page, I pick up the pen and begin to write.