Not if it means pulling her into the grind that hollows me out, into the constant proving and performing and pretending I’m fine. Into the version of my life that looks perfect on paper but has never once felt like I controlled it.
So I hold her tighter, press my chin to her hair, and pretend we have more than an hour before the rest of the world comes crashing back.
29
CONNOR
MONDAY
I feelher before I see her.
The faint shift of the mattress, the slow drag of fabric as she sits up. For a moment, I think I imagined it, still caught between sleep and whatever dream I was in, but then there’s a pause. That hush of someone purposely staying still and holding their breath.
We drifted together last night sometime after the last round of kisses faded, after her laugh went quiet against my chest and our breaths evened out. Her legs tangled in mine, her hand splayed over my heart like it belonged there. I don’t know when sleep finally claimed me—just that it was the first time in months I didn’t fight it.
And now she’s slipping away.
My first instinct is to open my eyes and reach out to her, pull her back down into the sheets, and wrap her in whatever this is. But something in the quiet keeps me still. I let my breaths stay slow and even, like I’m asleep, and listen as she rises.
The room is gray with early light, the mountains just catching the edge of sunrise. Manuela lingers there beside me, the weight of her presence warm. I can feel her eyes on me—the way she’swatching me like she’s memorizing something she isn’t sure she’ll get to keep.
My chest aches with the urge to tell her she’s wrong. That she doesn’t have to go. That I don’t want her to.
Instead, I stay quiet, eyes closed, and let her slip out. The soft pad of her feet on the wood floor, the faint creak of the door, the click as it closes. The silence she leaves behind is deafening.
I don’t fall sleep again but instead linger in a drowsy state until my alarm rings next to me two hours later.
By the time the sun edges over the peaks, I’m showered, dressed, and heading across the resort grounds. The mountain air bites, crisp enough to shock the fog from my head, and the path crunches beneath my sneakers.
The main building smells like coffee and yeast the second I step inside. Someone directs me downstairs to the kitchen, where stainless-steel counters gleam under fluorescent lights. Aprons hang from hooks, bowls and scales lined neatly in rows. A few other guests file in, already chattering, but I claim a spot at the end of a worktable, hidden in plain sight.
It’s not lost on me that I could be sleeping in or joining the others on whatever lazy breakfast Elle has planned for the morning. Instead, I’m here. Signing up for a sourdough class in Switzerland like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
The truth is, I’ve tried a dozen times. Starter after starter, loaf after loaf. All failures—dense, flat, nothing like the crisp, airy crumb I see online. The bag of flour in my pantry at home has a permanent rubber band twisted around its neck like a sad little reminder. My fridge has held more dead starters than meals. Just like all my other failed hobbies—the guitar lessons that I started but quickly quit because I couldn’t make them fit in my schedule. The different types of diets and healthy lifestyles I tried, the membership to the luxury gym across the street from my office building.
It’s all just been me trying to feel something. Trying to prove to myself that I’m not as numb as I’ve felt for months.
The instructor—a cheerful woman with hair tied in a scarf—starts explaining ratios, hydration percentages, patience. That last word sticks. Patience.
“Most people try to rush this part,” she says as she moves down the workstations, checking our bowls. “But if you push it, the dough pushes back. Sourdough needs time to wake up. Like teenagers.”
A few people laugh.
She stops at my station, peering into my bowl. “First time?”
“Not exactly.” I keep my tone light, though I can feel the corners of my mouth twitch. “I’ve… attempted a few times. Usually ends with something closer to a paperweight than bread.”
She grins, unfazed. “Then this is the place to redeem yourself.”
“Or confirm I’m a lost cause,” I mutter, which earns me a quiet chuckle from the guy to my left—a wiry older man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a camera strap across his chest.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “My first loaf could have doubled as a doorstop.”
“Same,” the woman on my right adds without looking up from her mixing. “My starter actuallyexplodedonce.”
That pulls a surprised laugh out of me before I can stop it. The sound feels strange in my own mouth, unfamiliar among these strangers.
I measure flour and water, stir slowly, watch the mixture come alive under my hands. And something clicks. Not the bread—it’ll take days before this turns into anything edible. But the process. The slowness. The lack of shortcuts.
