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The seat was empty.

Of course it was.

It always had been.

I forced my gaze back to the road.

That was the truth of it.

It was all empty.

Nothing more than something that felt real just long enough for the absence of it to hurt.

That was all it ever would be.

End of story.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

[ “SOME PEOPLE NEVER leave you. They just change how they stay.”

— Hexes on my Exes - Episode 14]

Maggie

The ground fell away.

Not literally. Nothing had moved.

But everything had shifted.

My arm flew out, almost as if trying to hold on as everything tilted sideways beneath me, like the world had forgotten how to stay in one place.

“Maggie?”

His voice was in my ears on repeat.

“Maggie?”

The shock, the disbelief, the horror.

My throat tightened.

I’d never forget that look on his face.

I’d imagined the moment a thousand times.

It was worse than anything I’d conjured up in my mind.

Because when I pictured how he would react when I told him, I imagined him being confused… maybe even angry.

Not broken.

God, he’d looked shattered.

I pressed my palms into my eyes as the tears fell, warm and insistent, down my cheeks.

A cry, raw and choked, clawed its way up and out of me as I curled forward into myself, like if I just held myself tightly enough, I could keep myself together.