Chapter 4 #2
Elliot slowly turned his head, just enough that we could see the outline of his nose and mouth beneath the shadow of his hood. Not hostile. Not angry. Just… blank.
“I’m not in the mood,” he said quietly, his words hollow.
“That’s not good enough,” David snapped, voice tight like a wire about to fray. “You don’t get to go silent. Not with her. Not with us.”
The words cracked through the room like thunder.
I looked between them, my heart thudding. David’s flushed face, Elliot’s clenched jaw, the thick silence hanging between them like smoke.
“You can’t just shut down every time you don’t want to feel something, Elliot!” David’s voice rose, brittle with fury.
The irony scraped at the inside of my ribs. I pushed my chair back, slowly standing. “David—”
“No, he needs to hear this.” David stood now too, eyes burning. “You think you’re the only one grieving? You think this is just about you?”
Elliot didn’t flinch. He just looked at him. Still. Still in the way of someone who’s been hit too many times to brace for the next.
“You are not the only one who lost her!” David’s voice cracked like glass.
I moved between them, gently pressing a hand to David’s chest. “That’s enough,” I murmured. “You’re not helping.”
David’s fists were clenched at his sides, trembling. His breaths rasped as they passed through cracked, dry lips.
Elliot broke first. Adjusted his bag on his shoulder. Didn’t say a word. Just turned and walked toward the door like the conversation hadn’t happened at all.
He didn’t slam it. Didn’t stomp. He just… left.
The back door opened and closed like a heartbeat fading away. The air had become thinner. Like he’d taken all the oxygen with him.
Neither of us moved.
I turned to David. My hand still hovered against his chest. He was shaking. His face was pale, lips pressed into a flat line that betrayed nothing and everything.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered.
“You are doing it. You have to. He. Needs. You.” I punctuated my words with every ounce of volatile pain that existed between them. “Now more than ever.”
“No,” David rasped, backing away toward the sink.
“Every time I look at him, I see her. I see the way she looked… on that hospital bed. I see what’s gone.
What I’ve lost.” He ran a trembling hand through his short graying hair.
“I hate him.” Tears glistened in his empty eyes.
“For living. For being here… when she isn’t. ”
The words hung in the air like a body on a noose.
I froze. Couldn’t breathe. That was the kind of truth you didn’t say out loud.
Not unless you were ready to bury something forever.
Or spill your broken to someone far more qualified than me.
Someone who understood psychology and what you were saying without actually saying it.
“You…” I croaked, unable to finish my thought.
“I don’t really hate him,” he added quickly, but it didn’t matter. The damage was already done. “I just… I don’t know how to be around him anymore. I don’t know how to be a father to that.”
He gestured toward the empty space Elliot had left behind, like it was tainted, haunted.
I took a step closer, voice softer now. “You don’t have to know how. You just have to try. Even broken things can hold weight.” David looked at me like I’d asked him to breathe underwater. “Have you thought about talking to someone again?” I enquired. “A therapist?”
David’s jaw tightened. His expression went flat. “No. Don’t start with that shit. Again.”
“David—”
“I said no.” He turned, grabbed his untouched mug, and hurled it into the sink. It shattered like brittle bone, ceramic exploding against the steel.
Then he was gone. The office door slammed a second later. I stood there for a long time. The only sound was the humming of the refrigerator and the memory of Elliot’s retreat echoing in my chest.
The air had that kind of weight to it—the kind that pressed against your chest and reminded you that you were still breathing, whether you wanted to be or not. Not exactly cold, but just enough that it raised goosebumps and made the night feel like a ghost brushing past your skin.
I was sat out on the back deck, elbows resting on my knees, wind tugging at the sleeves of my jacket like it was trying to pull me off the edge.
David had gone to bed hours ago. The house lights were off when he left me with a parting grunt almost like he was surprised I was still there.
Everything behind me was still. Silent like the grave we’d left her in.
Somewhere down the road a car passed, tires hissing against wet asphalt. Then nothing again.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Elliot didn’t want help. Hell, maybe he didn’t want anything.
But I couldn’t shake the look in his hazel eyes from my mind.
It haunted me every time mine fell closed.
Not the anger or the exhaustion—those were always there—but that split-second hollowness right before the door shut.
Like something inside him had finally given up.
Like some integral part of him had died.
That image wouldn’t let me go.
So I stayed. I waited and hoped he’d come back.
The wood creaked beneath me. A bottle of vodka rested at my side, cracked open and half-empty.
I hadn’t lit a cigarette yet—I’d been trying to quit for years—but I’d picked up a new pack earlier, anyway.
There was a certain level of comfort in the old habits.
Something to hold when I didn’t know what else to do with my hands.
Something to light if the silence got too loud.
It was past midnight. Stars punched through the cloud cover in jagged constellations. The kind you couldn’t name but stared at anyway, hoping for answers. The wind picked up again, colder now, sharper as it came in off the cliffs. I should’ve gone inside. Should’ve gone back to the Inn.
But I didn’t.
I stayed.
One o’clock ticked by. Still, nothing. And for the first time since she died, I didn’t know how to fix anything. Not myself. Not David. Not him. Not the way the world tilted just slightly off its axis, always threatening to throw me off.
Then, just when I started thinking he wasn’t coming, I saw it—a light. Flickering at the edge of the yard, out where the path disappeared toward the cliffs.
I looked up, heart tightening.
It was him.
Elliot moved through the tall grass like a shadow, hunched over his phone, the glow painting his face in pale streaks.
When his gaze lifted and landed on me, he froze.
Just for a heartbeat. The furrow between his brows, the slight tilt of his head, it was as if my very presence startled him, like he couldn’t place it.
And then he kept moving.
Each step toward me sharpened his silhouette, moonlight carving out the hard edges, the tired lines of someone weighed down by regret and memory. My chest tightened. Seeing him like this—wounded, wary, yet still moving toward me—lit something fierce inside me.
I wanted to reach out. Wanted to tell him he didn’t have to carry all of it alone. But I stayed still, letting the moon witness us first. Every hesitant step he took pulled me a little closer, tethered me to him in a way that was quiet, unspoken, and already permanent.
“I thought you’d left,” he muttered, voice low and ragged.
“I didn’t.” My throat tightened. “Didn’t know if I should have. But I stayed.”
His throat worked like he was swallowing something sharp. His eyes flicked to the vodka bottle, then to the cigarettes beside it.
“You waiting for someone?”
“Yeah.” I took a long swig. “You.”
He blinked once. Just once. But it was enough. A flicker passed over his face—something like disbelief, or confusion, or a crack in whatever armor he’d been wearing since her funeral. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. A muscle clenched in his jaw.
He moved closer, each step measured like he wasn’t sure the floor would hold—or if I would. He finally lowered himself onto the swing beside me. No words. No glance in my direction. Just silence thick enough to drown in as I rocked us slowly, toe rolling against wood.
It wasn’t a comfortable silence. But it wasn’t suffocating either. Just full. Heavy with all the things neither of us knew how to say.
“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing,” he said finally, jaw tight. “But I’m not some project you can fix.”
“I know that.”
“You don’t know shit.”
I nodded, accepting it. “I’m not here to fix you.”
A breath left him—half a laugh, half a warning. “Then what the fuck are you here for?”
I stared out toward the cliffs, the ocean crashing against the rocks far below. “I’m just trying to be here. For your dad. For you. Even if I get it wrong.”
“Everyone tries,” he muttered. “That’s the problem.”
“No,” I said quietly. “Everyone gives up.”
He stilled beside me. Not startled, more like a held breath. Just like something under his skin cracked, so small I almost missed it.
“No one stays,” he said after a long moment. A fact. A curse. A universal truth etched into bone.
“I’m not everyone.”
He looked at me then. Really looked. Hazel eyes catching in the moonlight, gold flecks shimmering like dying embers. All his grief and rage lived right there, behind his gaze, barely restrained. Like he was about to break the surface after years of drowning.
“You will be.” It was barely a whisper. “Eventually.”
His words gutted me. “Maybe,” I rasped. “But I’m still here. And I don’t plan on going anywhere.”
He didn’t respond. Just leaned back slightly, shoulder brushing mine. The touch was so light I almost imagined it. But it was contact. Real. Unmistakable.
I let the quiet wrap around us again before breaking it.
“When my sister died,” I said, voice rougher than I meant it to be, “I had this one night. Maybe a week after. I woke up convinced she was alive. I could feel her. The way she slammed cupboards. Her laugh. How she hummed while she cooked.”
He didn’t speak, but I felt him freeze beside me. Like he was listening intently but didn't want to show it.
“I wandered the house while my parents slept. I knew it was insane, but I couldn’t stop. I was terrified if I stood still—stayed in my room—I’d forget what her voice sounded like.”
“What happened?” he asked eventually, voice hoarse.
“I fell asleep in the hallway. Woke up with her scarf in my hands. Don’t even remember picking it up.”
I didn’t look at him, but I heard the catch in his breath.
“I dreamed about her,” he breathed like it was a confession. “Right after. It felt so real. Like I was back in that room. Like if I reached out, I could stop it. But I always wake up right as the monitor flatlines.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “That’s the worst part. Reliving it. Knowing they’re not coming back and still hoping, anyway.”
His next breath was sharp. Unsteady. I felt it down to my bones.
“I don’t do people,” he muttered after a long pause. “I’m not built for it. They always want something. Or they lie. Or leave. It’s easier to be alone.”
“I get that.”
His brow lifted, skeptically. “Then why are you here?”
I stared out toward the cliffs; the ocean crashing against the rocks far below.
“Because you looked like you were disappearing.”
The words hung between us like a verdict.
He blinked. Twice. Like he didn’t know how to process that. “You’re not what I expected.”
“Good,” I said. “You shouldn’t lower your standards.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. Barely there. But real.
The wind picked up, rustling dead leaves across the deck. The night held still, like it was waiting.
Elliot leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head hung between his shoulders. I passed him the bottle. He took it without a word and drank.
“Don’t expect anything from me,” he muttered after a moment, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I won’t.” I inclined my head toward him. “But I’ll keep showing up.”
He passed the bottle back. Our fingers brushed—warm and soft and hesitant. It wasn’t an accident.
“Don’t tell him,” Elliot said quietly.
I turned toward him. “Tell who?”
“My dad. About this.” He gestured vaguely between us, then toward the house. “About me being out here. About… any of it.” His voice wasn’t defensive. It was careful. Like he was handing me something breakable.
I nodded. “Okay.”
He released a breath I hadn’t realized he was holding. Just once. Like that mattered.
That single touch sparked something sharp and silent in my chest. Not a flame, not yet. But a flicker. A beginning I didn’t trust myself to name.
He didn’t pull away. Neither did I. The night held us in its quiet, the ocean breathing somewhere below like it always had.
I didn’t know what staying would cost me yet. I only knew I wasn’t leaving again.