Seraphina #2
The walk felt shorter than it ever had before. The evening fog rolled low between the birch trees, drifting across the ground in long white ribbons that curled around my bare ankles. The bakery box was still warm against my palms, the ribbon unmoving despite the breeze.
I climbed the three worn porch steps, smoothing the front of my white dress one last time before lifting my hand. Three soft knocks. Nothing. Then… Heavy footsteps. The latch clicked. The door opened so abruptly it struck the wall with a hard crack.
Elias filled the doorway. The smile I'd been carrying all the way up the mountain caught somewhere in my throat. He was still wearing what he wore earlier today. Or at least it looked like today’s clothes.
His shirt hung open at the collar, the sleeves rolled unevenly to his forearms. His dark hair was damp, as though he'd run a hand through it a hundred times without realizing.
Stubble shadowed his jaw, and exhaustion carved deep lines beneath eyes that hadn't truly slept in days.
He looked... Heavy. Like every missing woman had been tied around his shoulders with rope. For a second neither of us spoke. I held out the white box.
"I made…"
"What are you doing here?"
His voice wasn't loud. It was worse. It was empty. I blinked.
"I..." I lifted the box another inch. "I made cookies."
Silence.
"They're still warm."
His eyes never moved to the ribbon and never looked at the box, not even at the dress. They stayed fixed on my face. Hard. Unmoving.
"I don't want your cookies."
The words landed with surprising force.
"I just thought…"
"I know what you thought." His jaw flexed.
The smile disappeared from my face before I even realized it had.
"I wasn't trying to…"
"Yes."
His voice sharpened.
"You were."
He stepped onto the porch. Only one step. But it closed almost all the distance between us.
"You keep showing up. I don't have time for whatever this is. I only asked you to dinner because you looked lonely. I don’t need this. I don’t fucking want this."
His breathing had become uneven. Fast. Like he was trying to outrun something inside his own head.
"You don't know me, you don't know what's happening, and you don't have a fucking clue of what kind of week this has been. Stop being friendly because I don’t care. I was being nice to you at the beginning. Nothing else."
His eyes flickered for the smallest fraction of a second.
"I can't..."
He swallowed hard.
"I don’t want..."
The words almost sounded honest. Almost. Then something shifted. Something dark. Something he'd been holding back. His expression hardened.
"If you're looking for attention..."
His mouth twisted bitterly.
"Deputy Collins seemed more than happy to give it to you."
The world… Stopped, not dramatically. Quietly. Like someone had reached into my chest and switched something off. The wind still moved. The trees still swayed. Somewhere a bird called across the valley.
But inside me...
Nothing.
I stared at him. Confused. I genuinely didn't understand. Deputy Collins? Why was he talking about… Oh. Oh no. He'd seen. The thought settled slowly, painfully, into place. I looked down at the little white bakery box between my hands. The ribbon suddenly looked childish. Stupid.
"I wasn't..." My voice barely existed anymore.
"I wasn't talking to him because I wanted to."
He didn't answer. He just stood there. Waiting for me to leave. A strange little laugh escaped me. Small. Broken. Almost embarrassed.
"You think..."
I looked back up at him, tears already blurring the edges of his face.
"...you think this hurts me?"
Another tiny laugh.
"You think you're the first person who's tried?"
My fingers tightened around the cardboard until the corners bent.
"I grew up in houses where doors were locked from the outside. My bedtime stories were screams through walls.”
My throat closed.
"I know what it feels like to pray for the morning to come because the night lasts forever."
A tear escaped before I could stop it. I didn't wipe it away.
"I've survived things..."
My voice cracked.
"...that would've broken most people."
I smiled a sad little smile.
"So, no."
I shook my head gently.
"You can't hurt me, Detective Elias Reed."
A long pause.
My smile disappeared.
"I just never thought you'd want to."
His face changed. Immediately. The anger vanished. Only horror remained. His mouth opened.
"Seraphina…"
But I was already stepping backwards. The cookies were still warm against my chest. I held the little box tightly, like if I squeezed hard enough it might stop my heart from falling apart.
"I hope..."
My voice trembled.
"...you never have to find out what it feels like when the people you're trying hardest to be kind to... make you feel like you're impossible to like."
I turned before he could answer. Bare feet carried me down the porch steps. Across the gravel. Into the gathering dusk. I never looked back. Because if I had… I wasn't sure I would've had the strength to keep walking.
The kitchen was dark when the screen door sighed shut behind me. I didn't fall apart. Not immediately. I walked to the counter as though nothing had happened, setting the white bakery box carefully beside the sugar bowl. The ribbon was still perfect. One of the cookies shifted inside.
Crack.
A tiny sound. Ridiculously small. Funny how something so insignificant can become the thing that breaks you. I stared at the box. One second. Two. Three.
Then everything inside me gave way.
The sob hit without warning, ripping through my chest so violently my knees buckled beneath me. My shoulder struck the cupboard door as I slid to the floor, both hands flying to my face as though I could somehow hold myself together by force alone.
I couldn't breathe.
Not properly.
Each breath caught halfway, breaking apart into another helpless sob. I still smelled him. Pine. Rain. Smoke. Safety.
Now every breath of it hurts.
"He's an idiot!"
Gerald shouted from the mantelpiece, pacing furious little circles with all the authority of a ceramic dictator.
"A complete, monumental idiot with a badge!"
"He has the emotional intelligence of damp drywall,"
Frank muttered from the windowsill.
"He has less."
"He certainly communicates less."
"I've met paving stones with healthier coping mechanisms."
Frank nodded solemnly.
"Bricks."
"What?"
"Bricks apologize."
"They don't."
"They would if they could."
"He couldn't."
I laughed. Just once. It came out sounding more like another sob. Frank looked toward the floor.
"He didn't even take the box."
Gerald stopped pacing.
"No."
"He didn't."
The silence that followed hurt worse than anything either of them had said. Rejection is strange. People always compare heartbreak to knives. I don't. Knives are honest. They cut. They bleed. Eventually they heal. Rejection is different.
It's someone looking directly at the softest part of you...and deciding they don't want it.
Some of you already know that feeling. Maybe someone chose somebody else. Maybe they stopped calling. Maybe they walked away while you stood there wondering which version of yourself would've been enough to make them stay.
I'm sorry.
Truly.
I wish I could tell you there's a sentence that fixes it. There isn't. And if you've never felt it… I hope you never do. Because someday someone might hand your heart back to you as though it never belonged to them in the first place.
When that happens...
I’ll be here…
I climbed the stairs without remembering doing it. The bedroom waited exactly as I'd left it. Moonlight spilled across the wardrobe. The corkboard. The photographs. His face.
I stood there for a long time. My fingers reached toward the newest photograph almost on their own. I wrapped them around the corner. Pulled. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
Come on. Rip it.
He doesn't deserve to stay.
Rip it.
My hand trembled harder but it wouldn't move. It was only paper. Why did it feel like tearing out one of my own ribs? My strength quietly abandoned me. I slid down the wardrobe until I was sitting on the cold wooden floor, my knees tucked against my chest.
The photographs stared back. His photograph stared back. Downstairs… The cookies were probably still warm. Still waiting for someone who didn't want them. I suddenly knew exactly how they felt.
I rested my head carefully against the wardrobe door. Not against the photographs. Never against the photographs. Just...
Close enough.
For a long time, I listened to nothing. Then, so quietly even I almost didn't hear it… I asked the question I'd spent my whole life pretending I didn't carry.
"Why am I never enough?"
The room didn't answer.
Rooms never do. They simply remember every question they've ever been asked and somewhere deep inside me… A frightened little girl waited for someone to finally tell her she was worth staying for.