Page 87 of Shattered

Inside her apartment, she turned to face me.

“Stay tonight,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. No more distance. Just stay.”

So I stayed.

We didn’t make love—just lay in her bed talking until we were both too exhausted to form coherent sentences. She told me about the past three weeks—the guilt, the way she had to stop herself from reaching out to me.

I told her about waiting, checking my phone obsessively. And making my entire staff miserable because I couldn’t focus on anything except the woman who’d told me to leave.

She fell asleep first. Her head on my chest. Her breathing evening out into something peaceful.

I lay awake for a while longer. Just watching her.

Delia had surfaced. She’d chosen to grab onto something instead of sinking. Just like I knew she would.

And for the first time in weeks, it felt like enough.

CHAPTER 19

Delia

The weeksafter finding the journal were not a montage of instant healing or perfect romance.

They were messy. Complicated. Full of days when I couldn’t get out of bed and nights when I woke up crying for my mother.

But they were also full of Axel.

Axel, who wrote the date on the fridge every morning. Not big. Just enough so I didn’t lose the day entirely. Sometimes I stared at it longer than I should have, like it anchored me to something real.

When the fog got heavy, when even lifting my arms felt like too much, he washed my hair for me. Slow. Careful. His hands moved like this was something sacred, not something pitiful. I cried once, quietly, water and grief mixing, and he held me through all of it.

He prepared dinner in the evenings. Food that smelled like being taken care of. He set the plate in front of me while giving me space, the dignity of choosing whether or not I could eat.

When my chest caved in without warning, when a sob slipped out in the middle of the night, he just reached over, steady andsure, and rested his hand against my back like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He never asked me to be better.

He never asked how long it would take.

He just stayed.

It was exactly what I needed even when I didn’t know I needed it.

A month after the journal, I picked up a paintbrush.

Axel was at my kitchen table reviewing something on his laptop. I’d been sitting on the floor in front of a blank canvas for an hour. Just sitting. Staring. Trying to find the courage to start.

“You’re thinking too hard,” he said without looking up.

“I’m not thinking at all.”

“You’re definitely thinking. I can hear it from here.”

I threw a paint rag at him. He caught it without looking up from his screen. Show-off.