Page 138 of Only Be Mine

Not missing.

Not misplaced.

Not waiting somewhere for me to catch up.

Gone.

A sound escaped me then, small and broken, and I pressed my knuckles to my mouth to keep it from becoming something louder, something I couldn’t pull back.

This was the moment.

Not the wedding.

Not the honeymoon.

Not the night I’d chosen Trevor and deluded myself into thinking surviving could equal love.

This.

This was where John became real again.

I stayed there for a long time, the phone dark in my hands, Seth’s last words circling like a warning I wasn’t ready to open yet.

Someone close.

I didn’t call anyone back.

Not because I was hiding.

But because if I spoke, if I let any of it out, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop.

I didn’t move right away.

The phone stayed in my hands long after the screen went dark, my thumb hovering uselessly where Seth’s name still felt warm. I told myself I’d call him in a minute. After I breathed. After my chest stopped aching like something was breaking apart inside it.

Time passed anyway.

The house felt different now - too quiet, too aware of me. I stood and wandered without purpose, fingers brushing over familiar surfaces. The back of a chair, the edge of the counter, the picture frame I’d never taken down. Everything looked the same. Everything felt wrong.

John was gone.

The words didn’t get easier the more I thought them. They didn’t soften or blur. They stayed sharp, cutting into everything I tried to think around them.

I drifted into the living room and sank onto the couch, curling my legs beneath me like I used to when I was trying to disappear into myself. My gaze landed on the window, on the pale afternoon light stretching across the floor.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should do something.

Call Seth.

Call the detective.

Go back to Trevor’s house. Our house.

Instead, I sat.

Grief didn’t rush me. It settled. Heavy and patient, like it knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

I don’t know how long I stayed there before the sound came.