Chapter Forty Five
Camille
Weeks later, the way he looked at the shadow box, like it was delicate and loaded, still held a hold on me.
The way his voice cracked when he said thank you, like the words had been scraped raw from somewhere deep.
We came to a point where I thought maybe we had turned a corner.
For a while, it even felt like we had. He lingered longer, opened up more, and there was an ease between us, the kind that comes after a storm when the air feels clean again, and the world softens around the edges.
The kids adored him, my mom teased me about the way I smiled when his name came up, and at night, when the house went still, I let myself imagine a future that didn’t end with someone walking away.
Life was still messy, with school deadlines scattered across the kitchen table, bills tucked into the drawer I tried not to open, and Zeke’s boundless energy colliding with the twins’ daily chaos. But it all felt lighter with Hunter around.
He was simply there. Bringing takeout when I was too tired to cook, taking the kids to the park on Saturday mornings so I could finish assignments, and fixing the loose hinge on the cabinet.
The girls would squeal his name whenever his truck pulled up, curls bouncing as they ran to meet him, and even my mom couldn’t help but say how natural he looked in the middle of it all, like he had always belonged there.
We fell into a rhythm I didn’t expect. Piece by piece, wall by wall, I started to believe that maybe he wasn’t going to leave, that maybe, for once, I was safe.
Some mornings, he would swing by before work, coffee in hand, with Zeke dragging him into elaborate games that involved roughhousing and at least three costume changes.
The twins demanded “uppies” until he caved, curls bouncing as he lifted them high, their laughter spilling into every corner of the house.
Other nights, he showed up after bedtime, sinking onto the couch beside me while my textbooks lay open on the coffee table, ready to quiz me for class while pretending to be a strict professor until I was laughing too hard to study.
Other times, we didn’t need words at all.
My leg flung over his thighs, his hand resting warm against my knee, both of us breathing in the home we had built.
Even the silence between us had started to feel easy, like the kind that doesn’t need to be filled.
We’ve had quiet nights tangled together on the couch, talking about things I never thought I’d let myself say out loud again: hopes, fears, what the future could look like if neither of us ran.
This was him stepping into our world, piece by piece, without hesitation.
Even Dani noticed. “You’re lighter,” she said one afternoon, stealing food off my plate at the diner. I rolled my eyes, but she wasn’t wrong. “It’s still there,” I admitted. “The stress, the chaos, but I don’t feel alone in it anymore.”
She grinned, smug. “That’s what happens when you let a good man in. You stop carrying the whole damn world by yourself.” I smiled into my soda, unwilling to say it out loud, but knowing she was right.
For a while, everything felt steady.
But as the summer crept closer, something in him began to shift.
It started so small I almost missed it. Hunter would drift off in the middle of a sentence, his gaze caught by movement outside the window.
Not really seeing, just staring, like he was searching for something I couldn’t.
Something I couldn’t reach. Sometimes he’d come back to me with that easy grin, the one that used to melt me, and for a heartbeat, I’d almost believe everything was fine.
But then it would happen again. The quiet.
The distance. The way his eyes seemed to live somewhere else.
I kept asking myself what changed that I wasn’t aware of, if maybe I’d done something to push him back without realizing it.
I went through the mental checklist like I could logic my way out of heartbreak before it even arrived. My ex had stayed away, no more calls from blocked numbers, no more late-night threats that made my stomach twist. For once, life had felt still.
When Hunter was around, he fit. Not just with me, but with us. He blended in effortlessly, like he’d been written into our lives long before he showed up.
His friends became mine, and when I brought him to brunch with Dani, she grilled him relentlessly before giving me a look that said she’d approved.
We even spent time with Nick and Logan and their kids.
There had been one Saturday when we met at Logan’s house by the beach.
A glimpse into what our world could look like, all of it woven together.
Hunter had leaned close to me that day, hand brushing mine, and said softly, “This is nice, isn’t it? ”
I’d nodded.
But now, it was like he’d forgotten.
My heart ached to reach out and erase the distance and find that spark we had before, the one that used to light up entire rooms. But fear pinned me in place. Every time I looked at him, I felt that old ache stirring. The one that whispered, Don’t hold too tight; people leave when you do.
I watched the steam curl from my coffee, untouched and cooling between us, a quiet clock marking the space growing wider.
When I asked what was wrong, he’d just smile in that small, polite kind of smile that never touched his eyes before changing the subject like it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.
Every small gesture, every pause that stretched too long, every quiet that felt like goodbye. They piled up until the air between us felt heavy. The world kept moving, the kids kept laughing, the days kept passing, but I felt the ground shifting beneath us, subtle and slow.
I knew it wasn’t just me overthinking. I felt it everywhere. In the restless edge of my dreams, in the way my chest tightened every time he left, in how my nerves seemed to hum louder when I was alone.
At night, I replayed every small moment: the phone calls that ended sooner, the reasons he gave for leaving early, the way his hand barely lingered at the small of my back. Each detail pressed heavier on my chest, the voice in my head growing louder with every passing day.
The pressure built in my chest, a knot tightening in my throat. The world felt off-kilter, the mattress shifting beneath me, dropping me into that old, familiar ache of doubt. My therapist would call it my inner critic, the voice that makes me question everything I thought I knew.
The more I tried to push it away, the heavier it settled.
Every silence became rejection, every sigh a show of disappointment, every glance at the door a reminder of time running out.
I told myself he was tired, that life was heavy, that maybe he was carrying things he couldn’t say yet.
Maybe that was true. But deep down, fear twisted every answer into proof of what I’d always dreaded: people didn’t stay. Not for me. Not for long.
And every time he pulled away, even just an inch, it felt like I was losing him piece by piece.
I hated how quickly the old wounds reopened, how easily the scars split apart.
The guilt pressed in, too, because I knew he was fighting his own battles.
I saw it in the restless tap of his knee, the way his thumbs worked against each other when he was anxious, the hollow in his eyes when he thought no one noticed.
But when the house settled at night and the kids were asleep, the weight crept back onto my shoulders, pressing down a little more each day. Lying there, staring at the ceiling, I wondered if I should start preparing for the day he just stopped coming back.