Chapter 6
ANTHONY
“Anthony?”
David’s voice rang out through the still, hollow house the second I stepped through the unlocked door. Even now, the air felt heavy—like grief was hanging from the ceiling like mold, creeping into the walls, rotting everything from the inside.
“I’m here,” I called back, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. “Coffee?”
The kitchen smelled stale. Bitter. Like time had stopped the day Natalie died and no one had bothered to press play again. The coffee machine blinked red. Empty, again. I swear if I wasn’t coming here everyday nothing in this house would get done.
“Shit,” I muttered, more to myself than anyone else. I moved on autopilot, filling the water tank, measuring the beans. The small, mundane rituals were the only things that kept me from losing my goddamn mind in this place.
“I need to talk to you.”
I jerked around so fast my elbow hit the counter. “Christ, David,” I hissed. “You scared the shit out of me.”
He didn’t even flinch. Just stood there in the doorway like a ghost. Pale. Hollow-eyed. His mouth was set in a line so tight I wasn’t sure he could speak at all.
“You okay?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
His eyes flicked to the floor, then to the ceiling. Anywhere but at me. “I need you to keep an eye on Elliot.”
My hands froze where they were, halfway through reaching for two mugs. “What do you mean?”
He looked…wrong. Like someone had taken the David I knew and poured cement into his veins. “I… I know he’s an adult. But he’s not okay. And I—” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like it hurt to speak. “I’m going away for a while.”
My spine snapped straight. “The fuck do you mean away?”
He winced at the sharpness in my voice but didn’t back down. “Eight weeks. Maybe longer.”
Eight—what? “David.” My tone dropped, slow and dangerous. “You’re leaving? Now?”
He finally looked at me, and what I saw pissed me off more than anything—resignation. He’d already decided. Already packed the bags in his head and boarded the fucking plane. “This project… it’s been in the works for a year. I can’t walk away from it.”
My fists clenched around the edge of the counter. “But you can walk away from him?”
His expression cracked, just for a second. “I can’t breathe in this house, Anthony. I can’t look at the walls without seeing her. I can’t hear Elliot’s voice without—” His voice broke, and he looked away like a coward. “I see her in everything. In him.”
“Good,” I snapped. “You should. That’s your fucking son. He needs you. He’s drowning and you’re handing him the anchor.”
His face twisted. “I’m not strong enough.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You just don’t want to see him. Because he reminds you of what you lost.” His silence was an admission. “You’re not the only one who lost her,” I growled. “He did too. And now you’re leaving him completely alone?”
“I’m asking you to be there for him,” David said, voice shaking. “That’s why I called you. You’re the only one he listens to. The only one he’s let in.”
I took a step forward, rage boiling under my skin. “Because I show up. I don’t run. I didn’t check out the second the world stopped spinning.”
His jaw twitched, but he didn’t defend himself. “I’ll be gone tomorrow morning,” he continued after a beat. “Just… check in on him. Please. I’m not asking for forgiveness. Just help. It’s the least you can do for me.”
And I thought of the way Elliot hadn’t finished his tea the night before. The way his hands had hovered over the mug like he wasn’t sure what to do with warmth anymore. The way he’d smiled when I asked if he was okay — a soft, polite thing that didn’t reach his eyes.
I’d told myself it was just grief. That it was normal. That it would pass.
I wasn’t so sure anymore
I wanted to punch David. Wanted to shake him until he felt something. But what would be the point? He’d already disappeared. Long before Natalie’s body was buried in the ground, he was already gone.
“You don’t deserve him,” I said coldly. He didn’t respond. “You don’t deserve either of them.”
David turned away, walking slowly, as if his bones couldn’t hold him up anymore.
I followed him like a seething shadow, ready to go to war with him.
“You’ve got my number if anything comes up,” he muttered as an afterthought over his shoulder, just before slipping into his office and slamming the door shut in my face.
I stared at the grain in the wood, shaking with the effort it took to keep my fist from breaking through it. But I didn’t knock. Didn’t scream. Didn’t beg.
There was no point because he’d made his mind up. Even though it was wrong. I knew nothing I could say would make him change his mind. I just hoped one day he saw this for the devastating mistake it was and realized everything it had cost him.
Frustrated, I stormed down the hallway, through the kitchen, and out into the yard, the screen door crashing shut behind me.
My chest was tight, lungs working harder than they should’ve, like breathing was a task I hadn’t mastered yet.
I needed out. Needed air. Needed something that didn’t remind me of him, or a memory, or the ghosts we’d never buried properly.
I took the dirt path that curved through the field behind the house, damp with morning mist, until it broke into the clearing that led to the cliffs.
The wind hit me like a warning. Cold. Brutal. Familiar.
The ocean roared below, waves crashing against jagged rocks like they were trying to claw their way back into the past. It was the kind of sound you felt in your bones—violent and endless. A grief that never stopped howling.
This was where Elliot came when it got too loud in his head. I’d seen him here before, screaming into the void like it might scream back, like the ocean might swallow all the pain he couldn’t carry anymore.
I stood where he’d stood the night of her funeral. Toes on the edge. The horizon a smear of gray and salt. Endless and haunting.
“Natalie,” I whispered, my voice breaking as the wind tore it from my throat like it didn’t belong to me. “I don’t know what to do.”
The ocean answered with silence, crashing relentlessly against the rocks below like it was trying to drown out my desperation. My nails sunk into the palms of my hands, my knuckles whitening under the strain, like I could wring something out of the sky—some sign, some ghost of her.
“I thought I could help them—him,” I said, the words brittle. “I thought maybe I could stop whatever’s coming. But it’s all unraveling. I don’t know what to do.”
The ocean didn’t shift into her face. The clouds didn’t part. The horizon didn’t split open with revelation. Just the same relentless gray. Just the same endless ache.
“I can’t keep watching him fall apart,” I choked.
“But I can’t walk away either.” I dragged a hand down my face, feeling the grit of salt on my skin, the cold already stiffening my fingers.
My knees ached from standing too long in one place.
My body knew I was here, even if my head felt somewhere else entirely.
Because he won’t let me. Because I won’t let myself. Because somewhere in the pieces of him, I think I found a part of myself.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the old letter—the one I’d carried like a curse, Natalie’s last gift, the one I’d never dared open.
The envelope felt fragile in my hands, edges bent and stained with time.
I’d traced her handwriting so many times I could see it even with my eyes closed. Still sealed. Still waiting.
My fingers trembled as I tore the flap. The sound was sharp, a sudden crack in the quiet, like ripping something open inside me. I exhaled shakily, the paper fluttering, ink smudged where my grip had faltered. Natalie’s voice echoed through my head, impossible to ignore, almost accusing.
I’m grateful that you love me enough to be the bigger, stronger man and walk away. Because of you, I get to spend my life with my boys without having to watch them suffer.
I laughed, bitter and hollow. “He’s suffering now, Natalie,” I hissed, the words scraping raw at the back of my throat. “They both are. You just didn’t live long enough to see it.”
Then my eyes fell on the next line, and everything inside me went silent.
Please don’t hate me.
My throat closed. My chest tightened, twisting like something had been driven into the center of it. “As if I ever could,” I whispered, barely audible. Tears stung, blurring the words as they ran across the paper. And then I read the line that shattered the last of my composure:
But I’m going to ask one thing of you, even though I know I shouldn’t. Look after Elliot. One day he’ll need you. And I know David won’t be what he needs.
I stared. Again. And again. As if reading it faster might change the weight it carried.
She had known. Always. About the fault lines in her son, about the darkness simmering just beneath the surface, the ache he carried like a secret.
And she had handed that storm to me like a gift I wasn’t sure I deserved.
I whispered to the wind, voice broken. “You should’ve told me more… warned me.”
But maybe this was the warning. The only one I would ever get.
I should’ve left after the funeral. I told myself I would.
That I’d show up, pay my respects, and disappear.
But I hadn’t. I stayed—for them, for him.
Even now, clutching the last piece of her I had left, I wasn’t thinking of leaving.
I was thinking of going back. Back to Elliot.
Back to the quiet, broken fury in his eyes. Back to the chaos I couldn’t resist.
Because something in him pulled me like a riptide. Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it never would be. But it was something close. Something dangerous. Something I couldn’t name without bleeding for it.
Because love and ruin had always lived side by side. And God help me, I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.