Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mara
“I don’t know how to remember him without reliving that night,” I whisper. “I don’t know how to let any part of myself move on. And I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”
Alec’s jaw tightens once—barely—but he doesn’t look away.
He doesn’t look afraid of what I just handed him.
He just watches me with this quiet intensity that makes me feel seen and stripped down at the same time.
He’s not pitying me. He’s not waiting for me to stop crying.
He’s just . . . there. Present in a way people usually aren’t.
He steps closer. His hand finds my arm first—fingertips brushing the inside of my forearm like he’s asking permission without speaking.
Then he slides his palm up slowly, carefully, until it rests just above my elbow.
A touch so simple it shouldn’t undo me, yet somehow it feels like my whole-body has been waiting for someone to know exactly where to hold me.
The warmth of him seeps into my skin, steadying something that’s been rattling inside me for years. He isn’t pulling me in or trying to fix me—he’s just there, grounding my shaking without demanding I stop.
He leans in, close enough that I catch the breath he exhales, close enough that the space between us narrows into something almost unbearably intimate.
His thumb moves in a small, instinctive sweep, and it sends a shiver through me I can’t hide. My pulse responds before my mind does, tightening something deep inside me I’ve kept barricaded since the day everything fell apart.
It feels like a moment I didn’t agree to, yet, somehow needed more than I’ll ever admit aloud.
And God help me . . . I don’t pull away.
“Mara,” he says, and my name sounds different in his voice. Gentler. Like he’s trying to hand it back to me repaired. “It’s time to work through that. The guilt, the grief.”
He kisses the tip of my nose, and I’m starting to like that. “Time to face what happened. All of it. The hurt before he died. The hurt after. The things you’re still blaming yourself for.”
I look away. Just for a second. Just long enough to collect the little pieces of myself that want to fall apart in his hands.
But then I turn right back to him because my body has decided it trusts him more than my brain does.
“You make it sound so easy,” I murmur, my voice thinning. “Just . . . deal with it. But what if I can’t? What if knowing the truth ruins everything I’ve built? What if I find out that I was wrong and—”
My voice falters. My chest tightens in that awful, too-familiar way, and the fear spills out before I can catch it.
“What if I pushed him? What if I killed him?”
“Mara,” he says quietly, “you don’t actually believe that.”
“I do,” I whisper. “I tried to make him change, to be present, to show up for us. And that day—if I hadn’t pushed him—he’d still be here. Mila would have her father. I would have—”
“You could talk about him more often,” he suggests, then adds, “But I’m thinking you can’t because there’s so much anger inside you that you—”
“I could tell her the good things, but I’m afraid the bad will slip out,” I say, the words sagging out of me like they’ve been waiting too long. “What kind of person would I be if I told that sweet girl her father didn’t give two shits about us almost right after she was born?”
Alec’s eyes soften. It’s as if he’s listening for the truth under everything I’m trying not to admit.
“It won’t be easy,” he says quietly. “But there’s a difference between being a good father and a good husband.
We talk to her about the father. You don’t have to bring up the husband.
And if it’s easier to say it with someone in the room to remind you who you’re talking about, then do that.
Therapy for both of you could help. I never grieved my own losses, and by the age of eighteen, I was an angry ball of fists that spat fire and punched whatever or whomever pissed me off. ”
He’s right—pain doesn’t evaporate just because you tried to outrun it.
It grows roots when you ignore it. I glance at my aunt’s letters spread across the coffee table.
Realizing, with a quiet punch of truth, that I’ve spent more time grieving her heartbreak within the past few days than facing my own.
Her story pierced through me in places I didn’t even realize were hollow.
My own wounds? Those I’ve tiptoed around.
It probably isn’t simple. But maybe it doesn’t have to be complicated either. Maybe it’s just time.
Alec reaches for my hand, carefully in a way I feel all the way up my arm. He lifts it, slow enough that I could pull away, but I don’t. And when he presses his lips to my knuckles, barely there, something inside me stilling and surging at the same time.
“I know it’ll hurt,” he murmurs against my skin. “But ignoring it hurts worse. You don’t want all that buried inside you. It’ll keep scraping at you every time life shifts.”
My breath wavers from the way he’s holding my hand like he’s memorizing it.
“Why do you care?” I whisper.
His gaze lifts to mine, and something bare flickers across his face. “I don’t know the full answer,” he says quietly. “But I don’t like when you hurt.”
The words undo me a little. Make me fall a little more.
Usually, I’d pull away. Deflect. Run. I’ve built a life around not needing anyone. But his hand is in mine, and—for once—I don’t want to let go. Even if this whole thing terrifies me.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.
“Me neither.” He shrugs. “But we can learn. To heal. To love. Maybe even to find a forever.”