"You would have loved him," I whisper to their frozen smiles. "Would have seen past his name, past everything, straight to his heart. Just like Gran did."
The ache in my chest expands until it's hard to breathe, a physical pain that radiates outward with each heartbeat. I can't have them back—can't feel Mom's arms around me or hear Dad's laugh or watch their love story continue to unfold. Just like I can't have Ares. All I have are memories, fragments of happiness preserved in photographs and heart-wounds that never quite heal.
"It's not fair," I choke out, pressing the photo to my chest like I can somehow absorb their love through the paper. "Why do I keep losing everyone I love?"
The silence echoes back, empty as the spaces they all left behind. Mom and Dad's sudden absence, Gran's passing, and now Ares—a different kind of loss but no less devastating. All I have are these frozen moments, these ghost-memories of love that slipped through my fingers like water.
The photograph trembles in my hands as tears blur my vision. In the image, Mom's wearing the necklace Dad gave her on their first anniversary—a delicate rose gold chain she never took off. Just like I wore Ares's compass necklace until his mother ripped it away. The parallel makes me want to scream until my throat bleeds.
Instead, I carefully return the photo to the box, my tears falling onto the wood. Some loves you can only keep in memories, preserved like pressed flowers between pages of what might have been.
With blurred vision, I carefully return the dress to the trunk, smoothing the delicate fabric with trembling hands. That's when something catches my eye—a leather-bound book wedged into the corner, half-hidden beneath an old shawl. The spine is unmarked, unlike Gran's other diaries that sit in neat rows on my bookshelf.
My heart skips as I pull it free. Another diary? The cover is worn smooth, the pages slightly warped as if it had once gotten wet and dried.
"More stories for me, Gran?" A watery smile tugs at my lips as I clutch the book to my chest. Even now, she's finding ways to keep me company through the darkness. If only she were here now, to tell me how to piece my shattered heart back together one more time.
I add the book to the stack of diaries in the living room, my legs giving out beneath me as I sink to the floor. The weight of everything—the memories, the loss, the crushing solitude—presses down on me until I can barely breathe. I draw my knees to my chest, making myself small, as if I could somehow disappear into the floorboards.
The defiant ring of the doorbell shatters my reverie. Like clockwork, three o'clock sharp. Friday's check-in. Emma comes Mondays with fresh pastries and forced cheer. Alisha or Amanda storms in on Wednesdays with takeout and righteous anger. But Fridays and Sundays belong to Ethan—the closest thing to solace I've found in the endless maze of grief.
I don't bother calling out. Since he has a key, he'll come anyway, that steady, reassuring presence I've come to rely on more than I can admit. I press my fist against my mouth, trying to swallow back the sobs threatening to tear me apart. Just hold it together. Just for a minute more.
The door creaks open, the familiar cadence of Ethan's footsteps echoing through the cavernous loft. I don't look up from where I'm huddled on the floor, knees tucked to my chest in a fragile approximation of comfort. I can't bear to meet his gaze, not when my defenses have shattered into this raw, exposed state.
"Bella?" His voice is soft, careful—like he's approaching an injured animal more than a friend. The floorboards groan under his weight as he moves closer.
I try to respond, to dredge up the tattered remnants of the strong, unbreakable woman I once was. But when my eyes lift and find his, all I can manage is a choked, trembling whisper. "I can't—"
The rest dissolves in a ragged sob that feels torn from the deepest pit of my soul. In an instant, Ethan's arms are around me, and I crumple against the solid warmth of his embrace. His shirt carries the faintest trace of Ares's cologne, which is ridiculous, but my brain doesn't care about logic. That painfully familiar scent is all it takes for the last thread of my composure to snap, unraveling me completely. It's absurd how something so small can break me when I've withstood so much, but here I am, coming apart over a ghost of a scent on a different man's shirt.
"I can't even call him." The confession is agonizing, each word scraped over shards of broken glass. "I can't hear his voice, because it would break me, Ethan. Break us both into pieces too jagged to ever piece back together."
His arms tighten almost imperceptibly, and I cling to him, to this solitary lifeline keeping me tethered to the world. We sit there, the silence a cacophony of my inner turmoil, surrounded by the chaos of my anguish spilled onto canvas in broad, manic strokes.
Ethan doesn't try to fill the void with empty platitudes or hollow reassurances. He simply... lets me break, cradling the shards of me that grow sharper with every ragged breath. He's the eye in the storm, the singular point of calm in my raging sea of heartbreak.
I don't know how long we stay like that, frozen in an endless moment of grief. But eventually, the sobs ebb into hiccuping exhales, and Ethan gently pulls away just enough to meet my gaze. His expression is a war of guarded concern and barely restrained anger—not at me, but at whatever forces have brought this much anguish crashing into my world.
"Come on, Bells." His voice is low, soothing, as he helps me up from the floor with an ease that speaks to the countless times he's had to put the pieces of me back together these past weeks. "Let's get you over to the couch."
I let him guide me across the loft, his presence a comforting anchor against the maelstrom in my head. He settles me on the worn, overstuffed sofa that's become my place of refuge more times than I can count. As I curl into the familiar embrace of the plush cushions, Ethan's gaze roams over the new canvases with a pensive intensity.
"These are...intense." His tone is carefully neutral, giving nothing away. "Different from your usual style."
A harsh, bitter bark of laughter escapes before I can stop it. "Yeah, well, apparently heartbreak does that to your art."
I don't miss the flicker of something like gratitude in his expression—a silent acknowledgment that I'm not trying to plaster over the cracks with empty bravado. Not this time. Not with him.
Leaving me cocooned in the warmth of the sofa, Ethan moves toward the kitchen area with a familiar, easy confidence. The coffee pot whirs to life, the rich aroma filling the air as he sets out mugs—just another ritual in our daily dance of coping. Of breathing through the unbearable by focusing on the simple tasks that tether me to the act of living.
By the time he's settled into his usual overstuffed armchair, steaming mug in hand and paperback thriller resting open on the broad arm, the jagged edges inside me have started to dull ever so slightly. This is what I've come to crave about our time together—the seamless cadence of silence punctuated by the soft sounds of pages turning, of ceramic on wood, of brush against canvas as I get up and lose myself in creating.
I don't know how much time slips by like this. Entire lifetimes might rise and fall in the spaces between each measured inhale. But eventually, the ping of Ethan's phone shatters the tranquil spell—the arrival of our usual takeout order, like clockwork.
"You need to eat, Bella." His tone is gentle but unwavering as he holds out a pair of cheap wooden chopsticks, the paper cartons of kung pao chicken and lo mein steaming on the coffee table before us.
I set down my brush, realizing for the first time just how ravenous I am. As I accept the chopsticks, our fingers brush, and I'm struck by how his hands have become the physical tether keeping me grounded to this world.
