Chapter 29
twenty-nine
HOLDEN
It’s not like the last time we shared a bed.
I tug the coin Sebastian gave me out of my pajama pant pocket and turn it over and over in the moonlight slanting through the windows. The metal hums faintly—alive, but quieter than it used to be. Maybe it’s waiting for her. Maybe it’s waiting for us.
I’ve got no doubt this coin helped nudge me toward Laila last December—toward honesty and hope for a future between us. For more than one weekend a year.
It found her letters when logic said it shouldn’t. It hummed the night she kissed me under the lights last December—our first snowstorm together—and when I lost her in October, it went cold.
But I wish it could help Laila now. She seems so lost, so scared.
McKenna is right: she’s got to conclude, all on her own, that love doesn’t hurt. I can show her what safe looks like, but she’s got to believe it for herself.
The pillow wall is still in place, a flimsy representative of fear. I can’t help but think this is who we are now—split right down the middle.
A line of cotton and stuffing. A line between fear and faith.
October fractured us to pieces.
I’ve spent every day since trying to glue us back together, but she’s still holding pieces to herself. And until she’s willing to share them with me, we can’t be whole again.
I hate it.
There’s an ache in my chest that doesn’t belong here, not when she’s here with me. It’s the kind of ache that usually comes from “I’ll see you next December”. And yet, here it is, stretching out in the dark.
Outside, the wind rushes against the glass like ghosts rehearsing the past—October’s argument, the slammed door, her mother’s voice threading through my nightmares. I hate that those ghosts still haunt her more than they haunt me.
I want to demolish those pillows and pull her close. I want to feel her curl right into me and clutch my shirt like I’m her anchor again. Like this is where she belongs.
Because she does.
She always leaves breadcrumbs—messages, notes, soft things that smell like sugar. And every time, I follow them right back here. Maybe that’s what love is: choosing to follow even when you don’t know if the trail leads home.
“I love you, Laila,” I whisper to the dark. “Come back to me. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”
Nothing but silence echoes back.
At least she’s sleeping. Maybe wherever she’s gone in her dreams, she’s happy.
Maybe she’s somewhere I can’t reach—caught between who she was and who she’s becoming. Henry would probably call it her mirror scene, the part of the story where the heroine finally faces herself.
I stretch to set the coin on the nightstand. Moonlight glints off it once again, sending a shimmer of pale light across her skin.
Maybe the morning will bring us something new.
A different page or a rewritten prophecy. A softer kind of light this time.
Her breathing is steady, a quiet lull that pulls me into sleep.
Sometime in the night, between wakefulness and sleep, she inches closer to me. Or at least I think she does. The warmth crosses the pillow wall, light as breath, melting the cold.
But the idea is enough to send me into a deep, comfortable drift—the kind that feels safe.
Like we’re finally crossing back over to ourselves.