Nate didn’t react. “What’d he say?”
“That he misses talking to me.”
Nate made a low sound in his throat. “That’s rich.”
I looked over. “You always had a grudge against him.”
“Because he was comfortable letting you do all the emotional heavy lifting.”
“He wasn’t that bad.”
“He was just bad enough that you forgot what it felt like to be lovedback.”
That stopped me.
I stared at the water.
“I don’t know if I want to fix it,” I said. “Or if I just don’t know how to be without something to fix.”
Nate didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was quiet.
“I think you’ve been carrying so much for so long, you forgot how to want something that doesn’t need saving.”
I turned toward him. “Like what?”
He met my gaze. “Like someone who already sees you. Who isn’t asking you to prove anything.”
It felt like the world tipped a little under my feet.
Not because of what he said.
Because of how much I wanted to believe it.
We didn’t touch.
We didn’t move closer.
But something in me cracked anyway.
And the light got in.
I walked backto the house slowly, every step feeling like a decision I didn’t know how to make yet.
Inside, the living room was quiet. June was upstairs with Lily. Willa had left her sketchbook open on the coffee table—an unfinished drawing of three hands, tangled and reaching.
I sat down across from it, just staring.
That was the thing about Willa. She said more in pictures than most people said in a lifetime.
I reached for my phone, thumb hovering over Daniel’s message.
Then I deleted it.
Not because I had closure.
But because I finally stopped needing it.
The house was still.
