Chapter Seven
The Cracks Beneath the Vows
Sierra
Before She Was Back
It’s one of those nights where the house feels too quiet, like it knows we’ve run out of things to say.
Or like it knows something’s shifting between us.
The dishwasher hums. A game murmurs on the TV in the living room with the sound turned low, all crowd roar without words.
Somewhere upstairs, the heat kicks on and clicks through the vents like a tired heartbeat.
We move around each other the way we always do at this hour: in quiet lines that almost intersect but never quite touch.
Jace drops his keys in the ceramic bowl by the door.
I hear the soft clink without looking up.
I’m at the counter, breaking spaghetti in half over the pot because I can’t remember how to cook for two without making enough for six.
He crosses behind me for a glass, and I shift an inch without thinking.
He says “Scuse me,” warm and automatic, and I say “You’re fine,” because that’s automatic too.
Silence fits between us like furniture we stopped seeing. We’ve learned how to walk around it.
“Practice run long?” I ask, stirring the sauce that doesn’t need stirring.
“Bit,” he says, pouring water from the tap. A beat. “Field crew had to recalibrate the sleds.”
I nod like that means something. He drinks half the glass in three swallows, puts it in the sink, and turns the water on again to rinse it even though it was just water.
Little courtesies no one taught him, or maybe someone did a long time ago and he never forgot.
Jace is still careful and kind. Just… not really here with me.
We were good at pretending. Pretending we had time. Pretending the cracks didn’t show.
“Smells good,” he offers, and I try to recall the last time that sentence landed in my chest instead of skimming across the surface.
I used to ask him to taste the sauce, press the spoon to his lips and watch for the tiny nod that meant yes, this, right here.
Now I set two bowls on the counter and tell myself an appetite will show up once I sit down.
He leans his hip against the island and rubs the back of his neck like the muscles there never unclench anymore.
The overhead light catches the line between his brows that wasn’t there when we met.
Or maybe it was and I just never noticed it.
I count the seconds he stares at nothing: eight, nine, ten—there and gone like a wave that never breaks.
“How was your day?” he asks finally, and I can tell he’s reaching, the way people reach in a dark room, hands out, hoping for a wall.
“Busy.” I twist the dish towel in my fingers. “Client revisions, new swatches everywhere, and a render file that refused to export. Nothing thrilling.”
He smiles a little. “You’ll make it work. You always do.”
It’s such a simple thing to say, and for a heartbeat I’m angry at it for being soft and harmless when what I really want is something real.
Something that feels alive. I want him to tease me.
I want him to steal a noodle from the pot and burn his mouth and laugh about it.
I want the sound of a life we almost built—the one I kept hoping would come together if I just tried hard enough.
We had moments, glimpses of warmth between all the cracks, but they never lasted.
We never figured out how to hold on to them.
“Eat in here or…?” I trail off, already carrying the bowls to the table we never use.
“Here’s good.” He follows, chair legs whispering against hardwood as he sits. He twirls pasta without looking up, like his hands remember what his mind misplaced. We chew. We don’t talk. The TV murmurs from the next room like a neighbor telling a story through the wall.
He asks about my brother because he always asks about my family when he runs out of questions.
I tell him Griff texted a meme that made me snort in line at the pharmacy and I got dirty looks for it.
He smiles at that, really smiles, mouth and eyes and then the smile fades, like a wave again, washed thin before it reaches shore.
“Cold front coming,” he says, glancing at the window. The blinds are half-closed, slats like ribs. “They’re saying rain by Friday.”
“Mm.” I sip water I don’t want. “I’ll dig out the thicker blankets.”
He nods. I nod.
I study him when he looks away. The square of his shoulder in the tee shirt he’s had since college.
The quiet strength that drew me in long before either of us knew where we were going.
He was a steady place to stand when the ground under my feet felt like it was falling away.
Maybe that’s why I chose him. Maybe it’s why I stayed.
Maybe it’s why it hurts now, because steadiness without closeness feels like standing on ice.
We were good at pretending. At first it was brave. Then it was habit. Now it’s muscle memory.
He reaches for the Parmesan. His fingers brush mine, a static snap that doesn’t belong to weather. We both pull back like polite strangers on the same subway pole. The tiny jolt echoes bigger than it should.
“Sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be,” I answer, and neither of us means the cheese.
After dinner he stands, gathers our bowls, and rinses them with that same carefulness that used to make me feel looked after and now just makes me feel…
handled. He stacks them in the dishwasher like it’s an equation that can be solved if he arranges the pieces the right way.
I watch his hands because I can’t watch his eyes.
“You’ve got film?” I ask, even though I already know. The laptop on the coffee table has been a third presence for months.
“Yeah.” He dries his hands on the towel I’ve twisted into a rope. “Just an hour.”
“Okay.” I fold the towel back flat, smoothing corners that were never crooked. “I might take a bath.”
“Good.” He says it like a blessing, or a dismissal, or both. “You should.”
He pauses in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the way he does when he wants to say something that might bend the air. I hold my breath and wait, and he lets his go instead.
“Thanks for dinner,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
I run the bath too hot on purpose, sink down until the water licks at my ears and the house sounds like it’s happening in another city.
I stare at the ceiling and catalog hairline cracks in the paint, the way steam curls and disappears, the constellation of tiny water marks from an old leak we never bothered to fix.
Some part of me keeps score of everything we didn’t get to. I don’t know how to stop.
When I was little, I thought marriage was a door you stepped through and it clicked behind you, done, sealed, protected from weather. No one tells you that sometimes the latch never catches. That you take turns holding it closed with your shoulder until you’re too tired to lean.
We used to laugh, I remind myself. We used to argue about nothing and then make up over takeout on the floor. We used to be two people wanting the same future, or good at pretending we did. Now we’re two people careful not to bump the places that bruise.
Water cools around me. I let it. The tiles press chill against my shoulder blades when I sit up. Somewhere down the hall, his chair scrapes again. I picture him hunched over film, pen tapping, eyes far away. Still kind. Still careful but not here.
We were already breaking long before the vows.
I towel off and pad down the hall, hair dripping onto the hardwood.
On my way to the bedroom, I stop at the hall closet to grab a fresh blanket for the foot of the bed.
The top shelf is a mess, old candles, a box of off-season throw pillow covers, a shoebox I don’t remember putting there, wedged in the back.
I drag it down. The cardboard is soft around the corners, like it’s been opened and closed too many times.
Inside: a pair of knit booties I bought on a whim because they were cream and ridiculous and softer than anything had a right to be. A folded onesie with tiny stars. The printout of an online cart I never checked out. At the bottom, an envelope with my name in my own handwriting, never sealed.
The room tilts.
I sit on the edge of the bed with the box in my lap and let the air buzz in my ears. I used to think time softened things. It doesn’t. It just learns how to hide until you pull the wrong thread.
The thread was a night. The kind that starts small and ends up swallowing everything.
The Buried Past
It was after a fight with Jace we pretended wasn’t a fight. We’d said we needed space and then never defined what that meant. He stopped calling at night. I stopped asking if he’d come by. The apartment felt too big and too quiet and I hated how quickly the silence started to feel normal.
Knox, my brother's best friend since forever, showed up because Griff asked him to check on me. At least that’s what he said when I opened the door and found him in the hall, rain in his hair, hands in the pockets of a jacket that never quite zipped all the way.
“You good?” he asked, and it wasn’t small talk. He meant it. He always did.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “You don’t look… fine.”
He didn’t push past me or try to make me laugh. He just stood there, giving me time. When I finally stepped back and let him in, he toed off his boots and glanced around like he was memorizing details in case I decided to disappear.
We ended up on the couch with takeout I didn’t taste.
He listened while I rambled, saying things I hated hearing out loud: how I was tired of being patient, tired of waiting for something to feel solid.
How I hated that everything with Jace felt almost. How I didn’t know what to do with love that only showed up halfway.
“You deserve someone who doesn’t make you feel small,” Knox said, not looking away.