33. Fiona
Fiona
The apartment was too quiet when she got home.
Emma was still at the clinic, and Fiona had promised she didn’t mind being alone. She did. But it was the kind of loneliness she couldn’t admit out loud—not without sounding like she missed him.
She dropped her bag, kicked off her shoes, and stood in the center of the guest room. The weight of the day hung off her like wet clothes.
Marcus’ father at school. The paperwork at the lawyer’s office . The long drive back to Sweetwater.
Fiona walked to the bed and sat, slow and stiff, like her limbs weren’t all working together. She pulled the quilt up around her shoulders and tucked her knees to her chest. It didn’t help.
She looked down at her hands. One bare finger, feeling naked from a ring she no longer wore. She pressed her thumb to it like she could still feel the weight.
And then—because she couldn’t stop herself—she wrapped her arms around her own body.
It wasn’t the first time. She’d done this before. Curled into herself like she could create warmth with nothing but skin and breath and memory.
She squeezed tighter. Tried to imagine arms around her. Arms that knew exactly how to hold her. A shoulder to bury her face against. A heartbeat to count down the minutes until she could breathe again.
She told herself it was just a hug. Just comfort. Nothing more.
She told herself she wasn’t pretending those arms were Dean’s.
But she was. Of course she was.
And it wasn’t enough.
Her throat tightened. She blinked hard at the ceiling, willing the tears not to fall. She was tired of crying. Tired of wanting things she couldn’t have. Tired of the empty space beside her in bed and the colder one inside her chest.
She lay back, arms still locked around her torso, holding herself like she might come apart otherwise.
Eventually, the ache dulled to something tolerable.
But not gone.
Never quite gone.
The knock was different this time. Soft. Hesitant.
Fiona looked up from her laptop, where she'd been responding to comments on her latest post. The knock came again.
She knew it was him before she opened the door.
Dean stood on the porch, hands behind his back, looking smaller somehow. His hair was messed up like he'd been running his fingers through it. There was flour on his shirt.
"Hi," he said quietly.
"Hi."
They stood there for a moment, the space between them feeling both infinite and fragile.
"I brought you something," he said, and pulled a plate from behind his back. It was covered with aluminum foil, the edges tucked neatly underneath. "I know you probably don't want to see me, but I... I made these."
Fiona stared at the plate. "You made...?"
"Cookies." His voice was barely above a whisper. "Chocolate chip. I remembered you said... you always said baked goods solve everything."
Her throat tightened. She had said that. A hundred times, probably. To neighbors with sick kids, to students having bad days, to Dean himself when work stressed him out.
"Dean—"
"I know they don't," he said quickly. "Solve everything, I mean. I know that now. But I just... I wanted to try."
He held the plate out like an offering. Like prayer.
Fiona looked down at it, then back at his face. He looked wild.
"You don't have to eat them," he continued, words tumbling out faster now. "You don't have to do anything. I just... I needed to make them. For you. Because you always made things better, and I… I wanted to do that for you this time.”
The worst part was how much she wanted to take the plate. How much she wanted to lift the foil and see whatever imperfect cookies he'd managed, to taste something he'd made with his own hands because he was thinking of her.
The worst part was how her heart still stuttered when he looked at her like she was precious.
Fiona looked down at the plate, then back at Dean. His hands were still outstretched, as if he wasn’t sure what he’d do if she didn’t take it.
She reached forward and curled her fingers around the edge of the plate. Their hands didn’t touch. But for a second, they were close enough to.
“Thank you,” she said, voice barely audible.
He turned to go, then stopped.
"Fiona?" His voice was thick. "I'm proud of you. I know you don’t need anyone, least of all me. I just... I wanted you to know that if you ever do need me,” his voice broke. “If you ever need me, call me. Anytime. And I’ll be there.”
He started walking away, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the evening air.
Fiona watched him go, the plate warm in her hands, something cracking open in her chest.
She'd been so strong. She'd been handling everything—the divorce lawyer, the apartment hunting, the inappropriate parents, the long commutes. She'd been rebuilding herself piece by piece, proving to everyone, to herself, that she could do this alone.
But standing there with his imperfect cookies, watching him walk away without asking for anything, she felt the weight of all that strength pressing down on her like water.
"Dean."
He stopped, turned back.
"Can you..." she started, then stopped. Swallowed. "Can you hug me? I just really need someone to?—"
He was there, his arms around her, before she finished speaking.
She was still holding the damn plate in one hand even her arms wrapped around him. She pressed her face into his shoulder, and let herself dissolve.
All the careful composure, all the determined independence, all the walls she'd built to protect herself from exactly this—it all crumbled at once.
She just wanted to be held in his arms this one last time, the place that used to be her safest place.
He smelled like flour and vanilla and something essentially Dean. His hands were warm on her back, one palm flat between her shoulder blades, the other cradling the back of her head like she was something precious.
"I've got you," he whispered into her hair, voice rough. "I've got you."
She wasn't supposed to want this. Wasn't supposed to melt into the familiar safety of his arms, wasn't supposed to feel her breathing steady for the first time in weeks. But God, she was so tired of being strong all the time.
She didn’t even realize she’d let go of the cookies until she heard the dull thunk of the plate as it hit the wooden porch. She was clinging to him now. Her hands fisted in his shirt, as if she could draw him even tighter against her.
"I'm shouldn’t,” she whispered against his shoulder. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't?—"
"Don't," he said firmly, his arms tight around her. "Don't apologize. You don't have to be strong every second. Not with me."
They stood there on Emma's porch, holding each other like they were both drowning, the cookies at their feet and the world spinning on without them.
Eventually, Fiona pulled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
Dean cupped her face gently, thumb brushing away a tear she'd missed. “Anytime,” he said. "For as long as you'll let me."
Fiona stood in Emma's kitchen staring at the plate of cookies on the counter.
She should go back to bed.
The house was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of Milo's snoring through the walls. Everyone else was asleep. Everyone else was safe in their uncomplicated relationships, their normal lives where husbands didn't turn wives into entertainment.
She could still feel the phantom weight of his arms around her from an hour ago. The way her body had betrayed her, melting into him like muscle memory, like her heart hadn't gotten the memo that he wasn't safe anymore.
She picked up a cookie. It was lopsided, the chocolate chips distributed unevenly, one edge slightly burnt. Amateur work from someone who'd never baked anything more complicated than toast.
He'd made them for her.
The first bite tasted like vanilla and butter and something she couldn't quite name. Effort, maybe. Or apology.
Baked goods solve everything.
She'd said that to him dozens of times. Usually while pressing a warm cookie into his palm after a bad day at work, watching his shoulders relax as he bit into something made with her own hands, her own love.
She took another bite, and suddenly she was crying.
Not the quiet, dignified tears she'd been rationing since the divorce papers. These were ugly sobs that came from somewhere deep and raw, the kind that made her double over against the counter.
It shouldn't have felt safe—his arms, his voice, the way he’d wrapped around her like she still belonged to him.
But for that moment on the porch, it had.
And that was the part that made her furious.
Because a hug shouldn’t feel like rescue when it came from the man who helped sink you in the first place.
Baked goods solve everything.
How dare he.
How dare he remember that phrase—her phrase, her belief in small kindnesses—and use it now, when it was too late. How dare he stand on Emma's porch with flour on his shirt and love in his eyes like he hadn't spent two years looking down on her.
She shoved the rest of the cookie in her mouth, chewing angrily through her tears.
@shitfionasays.
The name alone made her stomach turn. How long had he been thinking of that username? How many of her private moments had he catalogued, waiting for the right one to share? When she'd told him about crying over the owl, had he been calculating engagement rates in his head?
She grabbed another cookie, biting into it like she was biting into her anger.
Twenty-three thousand people. Twenty-three thousand strangers who knew her most vulnerable moments. Who'd laughed at her for believing the world could be kind, for crying at nature documentaries, for leaving notes in lunch boxes.
For loving him with her whole heart while he documented her like a science experiment.
But God, the cookies tasted like home.
They tasted like Sunday mornings when he'd wake up early just to bring her coffee in bed. Like the way he used to trace patterns on her back when she couldn't sleep. Like the Dean who'd held her during thunderstorms and told her she was brave, who'd kissed her forehead and called her his miracle.
That Dean had been real. She knew he had been real.
But so had the other Dean. The one who'd typed captions while she slept beside him. The one who'd smiled at dinner parties while his friends mocked stories she'd shared in confidence. The one who'd let strangers call her stupid, pathetic, embarrassing.
She hugged the plate against her chest. The foil crinkling, tears still streaming down her face.
She'd married the love of her life. She was sure of it. The way he'd looked at her on their wedding day—like she was sunlight and miracle and home all wrapped up in white lace. The way he'd whispered "I can't believe you're mine" against her hair as they swayed to their first dance.
She'd been his. Completely. Devotedly. Stupidly.
And he'd sold her for likes.
The part that made her want to throw the remaining cookies across the room was that some tiny, traitorous part of her still loved him. Still wanted to call him when something funny happened at school. Still reached for his side of the bed in the moments between sleeping and waking.
Still tasted these imperfect cookies and felt like coming home.
She wrapped up the remaining cookies with shaking hands and shoved them in the freezer.
Because loving someone who'd betrayed you didn't make you wise.
It just made you vulnerable all over again.
And she'd been vulnerable enough for one lifetime.