Chapter Ten
The Last Thread
Sierra
Iplanned this like a surgery. I stayed at my brother’s for a week, long enough to breathe and stop second-guessing myself, before deciding it was time to come back.
I drove myself over, knowing Griff and Knox were meeting me there later.
I picked a day when the house was supposed to be empty—when he should’ve been on the field with the team, whistle around his neck, doing what he does best.
I told myself that it would be easier if I did this on my own. It isn’t. Emma offered to help but I lied and told her Griff was helping since I was staying at his place.
Kneeling in front of the last built-in shelf in the living room, a roll of tape by my knee, a half-filled box open in front of me.
The room smells like cardboard and that faint dust you only notice when things are coming apart, the kind of stale quiet that settles in places that stopped feeling like home a while ago.
A couple of frames are still lined up in a row, little ghosts of a life I tried so hard to grow into.
I wrap another picture in newspaper and set it carefully in the box. My hands move on autopilot.
Pack.
Fold.
Tuck.
Tape.
If I don’t look at the photos too closely, they’re easier to treat like objects instead of proof.
The front door opens behind me.
The sound is so familiar my body reacts before my mind does. Heavy steps. Keys against wood. A quiet exhale like he’s pushing the day off his shoulders.
For a second, I tell myself I imagined it.
Then I hear his bag hit the entryway table and my stomach drops clean through the floor.
No, no, no, no.
This isn’t how this was supposed to go.
I freeze, fingers fisted in a sheet of crinkled newspaper. My heart bangs against my ribs, too loud in the quiet house. I stare at the crooked stack of framed photos on the shelf in front of me and try to remember how to breathe like a normal person.
His footsteps come closer. Down the short hall. Across the hardwood.
They stop at the edge of the living room.
Silence stretches, the same kind we’ve fallen into too easily these past months, only now it feels like it’s swallowing the room.
I don’t have to turn around to know exactly what he’s seeing.
Three taped boxes by the couch. One open by my knee.
The coffee table cleared except for the ring where his water bottle always lands.
The small pile of things I labeled donate because I could not, in good conscience, keep them.
The mug from that weekend trip we took, the kitchen apron he bought me because he thought it was cute.
And that stupid ceramic dog we joked about for months.
If I take them, I’ll only think of him every time I look at one of them.
“Sierra?”
His voice is low, rough from practice, like he’s already burned through half his words for the day. I swallow and force myself to look over my shoulder.
He’s standing in the doorway, hat turned backward, practice gear clinging to him in that way that tells me he came straight from the field. He looks tired… and stunned. His eyes move from the boxes to the empty spots on the walls. To me.
He wasn’t expecting this.
That’s its own kind of pain.
“Hey,” I say, because I’m an idiot and apparently that’s what my brain offers up in a crisis. “You’re home early.”
“Practice got cut short.” He steps inside, slow and careful, every movement weighted like he already knows what this means but isn’t ready to face it. His gaze drifts over the room again and he asks anyway. “What’s… all this?”
The cardboard box in front of me suddenly becomes the safest thing in the world. I turn back to it, pretend I have to fuss with the corner of a frame that’s already wrapped just fine.
“I, um. I’m just finishing up some packing.”
Smooth, Sierra. Nailed it.
He steps further into the room, just enough that I can feel him there. A warm presence at my back. My shoulders pull tight.
There’s another beat of silence, then, quietly, “You’re leaving?”
He doesn’t sound angry. He doesn’t sound anything. Just stunned. Soft and careful, like the words might crack if he says them too loud.
It hurts more than if he’d yelled.
I fold the newspaper one more time, even though it doesn’t need it. “Yeah.” My voice comes out thinner than I want. “I wasn’t… trying to blindside you. The timing just kind of worked out.”
Total lie.
I planned this down to the hour specifically so he would not be here. So I could slide out with my boxes and my taped-up heart and not have to look him in the eyes while I dismantled the version of our life we pretended still fit.
He takes another step in, hands sinking into his pockets like he’s afraid to touch anything.
His gaze lands on the framed photo still sitting on the shelf. The one I haven’t wrapped yet. The two of us on the back deck, summer sun, sweat and sunscreen, my head tipped back laughing at something he said. His arm around my waist like it was the most obvious place in the world for it to be.
We’ve both aged a hundred years since that picture.
He looks away first.
“How long have you been packing?” he asks.
“Couple hours.” My voice catches. “I wanted to make it easier on both of us. Try to get the bulk of it done before things get… complicated.”
He nods once, jaw clenched, eyes moving over the half-empty room like he’s cataloging what’s left. The throw blanket draped over the couch. The candle he bought because I said it ‘smelled like fall.’ The tiny scuff on the coffee table from when he dropped his playbook in a rush.
He doesn’t try to talk me out of it. He also doesn’t say stay.
He just stands there, taking it in.
Somehow, that breaks something inside me more than any argument ever could have.
Because this is honest, in a way we haven’t been in a long time. He knows this doesn’t work. I know this doesn’t work. We’ve been holding onto an idea of us for so long that we forgot to check if the reality still matched.
I slide another frame into the box and tape the top shut. The rip of the tape cuts through the quiet like a line being drawn.
“We said we’d talk more,” he says, finally. “After the season. About… everything.”
I nod, eyes on the cardboard. “I thought waiting would just… make it worse. I don’t think time is going to fix what needs to be said.”
Guilt flickers low in my chest. “I didn’t mean for it to sound harsh.”
He nods once, eyes flicking to the boxes. “It’s not harsh. Just… real. Still feels like we’re untangling something we never figured out.”
His shoulders go rigid, like he’s bracing for something I haven’t even said. It knocks the breath out of me a little. He tries to hold my gaze, but something flickers, a crack I didn’t expect, or maybe wasn’t supposed to see.
A beat passes before I add, quieter, “I’m not trying to hurt you.”
I look away then sit back on my heels and look around the room. Every empty space mocks me. The wall where our engagement photos never went up. The corner where I wanted to put a plant, but never did. The shelf where the baby books I hid in my cart never made it.
The love was real. I’m not cruel enough to pretend otherwise.
But it was never complete, and both of us knew it.
There was always something sitting between us on the couch. Some quiet ‘what if’ that didn’t belong to me, no matter how hard I tried to make room for it. We built a whole future on top of a crack neither one of us could seal. And I’m not stupid, I realize that all of that crack is my fault.
Just as I reach for another box, the deep rumble of a truck cuts through the quiet, pulling my attention to the window.
The sound snaps straight down my spine.
I stand up too fast, wiping my palms on my leggings, and move to the front window. My heart’s hammering hard enough I can feel it in my throat.
Perfect. Exactly what I needed, my hot-headed brother and the man he’s furious with in the same room.
Griff’s truck pulls up crooked in the drive like he owns the place. The rumble gets louder, steady enough to rattle something low in my spine. He doesn’t even bother easing up the driveway like a normal human being; tires skidding a little before his truck jerks to a stop.
I close my eyes and inhale once. “Perfect timing,” I mutter, which is hilarious, because this is the opposite of that. I needed five more minutes. Maybe ten. Time to breathe before the storm walked through the door and turned everything into shrapnel.
The passenger door swings open before he’s even turned the engine off fully.
Knox steps out.
Taller than I remember, baseball cap low, shoulders filling out his jacket in ways that should not matter right now.
Tall, broad, steady—like the kind of man built for winter storms and bad days.
Black T-shirt stretched across shoulders that look carved, jeans hanging low on strong legs, hair pushed back like he ran a hand through it on the way here.
His gaze sweeps the house, slow, assessing. Not nosy, just protective.
He stretches, looks at the house, then at Griff, and says something I can’t hear.
My brother slams his door, shakes his head, and gestures with his chin like he’s ready to storm a battlefield instead of a two-story colonial.
“Not yet,” I whisper, fingers tightening on the curtain.
Just five more minutes. Five minutes where it’s just me and Jace and the quiet acceptance of everything we couldn’t fix before Griff barrels in and starts assigning blame like it’s his job.
The floor behind me creaks as Jace steps closer. I feel him at my shoulder, the way he used to stand behind me when we were still trying — close, steady, impossible to ignore.
“I assume you asked them to help?” he asks.
His voice is tight now. Controlled in that way that means he’s barely holding something back.
My throat goes thick. I nod once, keeping my eyes on the driveway. “Yeah. I, um… they didn’t want me to move everything alone.”
What I don’t say is that I didn’t want to collapse alone, either.