Empty.
I drew in another breath, feeling like I’d just been dragged up from underwater. For a moment, I lay there disoriented, my heart pounding hard against my ribs as I tried to catch my breath.
Then the room came back into focus.
The bathroom light was off.
The door was closed.
The house was quiet.
Nora wasn’t here.
And Alisha wasn’t, either.
Because she was gone.
I dragged a hand down my face, my chest tightening as reality crashed over me.
It was just a dream.
Just my mind twisting together everything I’d been trying not to think about.
But even knowing that… the guilt still clung to me.
What am I doing?
My heart pounded wildly against my ribs as I stared up at the ceiling.
I turned onto my side and buried my face into the pillow.
The moment my eyes squeezed shut, something inside my chest cracked open.
And then a quiet, broken sound slipped out before I could stop it.
Two years.
Two years without her.
Two years of learning how to breathe again in a world where she didn’t exist anymore.
And still… the idea of moving forward made it feel like I was leaving pieces of her behind.
Like loving someone else meant betraying everything we’d been to each other.
Everything we’d promised.
My fingers curled into the pillow beneath me as the grief and guilt tangled together inside my chest until I could barely breathe around it.
Logically, I knew she was gone.
Logically, I knew she wouldn’t want me to spend the rest of my life alone.
But knowing something in your head doesn’t always make it easy for your heart to follow along.
And tonight, lying there in the dark, all I could think was?—
I wish I didn’t have to move on without you.