Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
ALMA
It’s amazing how quickly a house can feel haunted. And I don’t mean by ghosts, but by absence.
The first night back, I stood in the doorway longer than necessary, staring at the staircase. The banister had been repaired, the hardwood professionally cleaned. There were no stains left behind, no cracks, no visible history.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think none of it happened.
My dad simply made everything disappear, Lance’s car included.
On the second day, the police knocked. It wasn’t aggressive or the dramatic pounding you see in movies. Just two officers standing on my porch in the middle of the afternoon, the sunlight catching on their badges. You’d think they were here to discuss neighborhood parking violations…
“Mrs. Delfino,” one of them says politely. “We’re trying to reach your husband. Do you know where he might be?”
Dissolved in sulfur, I think to myself, but I don’t say that.
Obviously.
“I haven’t, no, but I recently filed for divorce, so I haven’t heard much from him these days,” I reply instead, channeling my inner Crew and keeping my tone calm. “He moved out after he was served.”
“When was the last time you heard from him?” the second officer asks.
I let myself look like I’m thinking, like I’m backtracking through a reasonable amount of time.
“A few days ago,” I state truthfully. “We argued about alimony and then he left.”
“Has he ever disappeared before?”
“Disappeared, no. He does travel for work, but he usually lets someone know where he’s going.”
The officers exchange a look that—shockingly—doesn’t look to be suspicious or accusatory. It’s purely procedural. They go on to ask a few more questions, and I answered them evenly, carefully, the house behind me pristine and unbothered.
When they take their leave, I shut the door and lean against it, expelling a shuddering breath. This is the part where guilt is supposed to bloom, and yet…it doesn’t.
By the third day, the house starts to feel less like a crime scene and more like a reclamation.
The quiet is different now. It doesn’t belong to a marriage.
It belongs to me…and my thoughts. I move the furniture slightly, donate the white table runner my mother bought us.
I open windows that haven’t been opened in years.
All things to keep myself busy.
To keep my mind busy.
And still, I can’t stop thinking about him.
I keep waiting for my phone to light up, but it doesn’t, and that—more than the police—is what unsettles me because I don’t know what we were in that cabin.
I don’t know if it was just the forced proximity or pressure of the situation, or the fact that he saw the worst thing I’ve ever done and didn’t flinch even a little bit.
But the lack of him stings…and I hate it.
I’ve told myself this is fine, though. After all, we said we’d go back to real life—and this is real life.
On the fourth night, I’m standing at the kitchen sink, staring out into the dark yard with a glass of wine in hand when what looks like headlights sweep across the window. My breath catches. It’s probably nothing, probably just the neighbors turning into their driveway.
An engine cuts, a car door closes, and then there’s a knock...on my door.
Heart climbing into my throat, I set the glass down and pad out of the kitchen into the foyer. I’m expecting the police again, inhaling a deep breath in preparation for whatever might come, but when I open the door, I find Crew on the porch instead.
My stomach somersaults like a swarm of butterflies. He looks the same but somehow not. Cleaner, and less rugged. For the longest moment, neither of us speaks. We simply stare at each other like one of us might disappear into thin air.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I lean up against the doorjamb. “You’re late,” I tell him, mostly because it’s easier than saying I missed you.
A corner of his mouth hikes up in that now familiar smirk. “I had to make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
“That everything was done.”
I gasp internally, allowing the finality of that word to sink in as I search his face. “It is?”
He bobs his head just once. “There’s nothing left.”
Relief washes over me like a tidal wave, yet moves through me in a slow, quiet current, washing away the residual anxiety clinging to my bones.
“And the police?” I ask.
“No sight of them. I assume they already stopped here, though, yeah?”
“They did.”
He watches me carefully, in that quintessential Crew way. “Are you okay?”
“I’m better now that you’re here.”
A beat passes between us, charged with everything we didn’t say in the cabin, everything that’s lingered in the silence without one another since.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” he admits. No preamble. No humor to soften it. The honesty of it hits harder than any joke ever could. “I tried to,” he continues. “Told myself it was situational, adrenaline, trauma bonding and forced proximity.”
My lips curve faintly. “And?”
“And I don’t drive two hours at nine o’clock at night for situational.”
The air between us shifts in nothing more than a blink. This is choice, not necessity. It’s not survival or shared liability.
Choice.
“You didn’t call,” I croon.
“I wanted to show up,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
There is, very much so. Without breaking eye contact, I step back from the doorway as an invitation.
He takes it, and suddenly, the house doesn’t feel haunted anymore.
It feels whole again, like it was waiting for him all along.
Stopping directly in front of me, he’s close enough that I can feel the heat emantating off his person.
“You sure?” he asks softly. He isn’t looking at me like like I owe him anything. There’s no pressure in it, just space.
Space for me to decide.
I think about the staircase, the pit, the steam curling around us in the shower. The way he never once made me feel like I was something that needed fixing. I think about the police standing on this porch, about the silence these last few days and how loud it was without him in it.
And I realize something unwavering and certain has taken root beneath all the chaos.
“Yes,” I affirm wholeheartedly.
This time, when he pulls me into him, it isn’t frantic or born from catastrophe. It’s intentional, real. His mouth finds mine like he’s been waiting for it, kissing me like his life depends on it, and when I kiss him back, there’s no confusion in it.
Lance is missing, the future still unwritten. And while everything leading up to this moment might’ve been a mistake—Crew isn’t.
Some choices ruin you.
Some set you free.
But either way, I’m dead serious about him.
THE END