hi honey

The house had somehow become the topic of the evening. Every family gathering over the last few months had eventually circled back to it. The renovation was finally about to begin, which meant everyone wanted updates on paint colors, flooring samples, contractors, budgets, and a hundred other details that had consumed your life for the better part of a year.

You didn’t really mind. The house was your dream house. It sat on a few acres just outside Austin, with a wide front porch and enough room for everything you’d imagined your future family might need someday. After your grandmother left it for you in her will, you’d spent years saving for the renovation to update it and make it just perfect, and now that it was time, every decision felt important.

Unfortunately, most of those decisions seemed to belong exclusively to you.

“…and if we move the wall back another foot, we’d have room for a bigger island.”

Your sister leaned forward immediately. “Oh, definitely do that.”

Across from you, your aunt disagreed. “No, don’t. Bigger isn’t always better.”

A chorus of opinions followed.

You laughed, shaking your head before turning toward your husband. “What do you think?”

For a second, he looked up from his phone.

“The island.” You smiled. “Should we make it bigger?”

His attention flicked briefly toward you, then back to the screen. “Whatever you want, dear.”

The answer arrived so automatically that you weren’t even sure he’d processed the question.

Around the table, several people smiled. Your aunt gave an exaggerated sigh. “See? That’s what I need.”

A few heads nodded in agreement.

“What?”

She pointed toward your husband. “That. A man who doesn’t argue about every little thing.”

More laughter spread around the table.

“Seriously,” your cousin agreed. “You’re lucky.”

The word lodged somewhere behind your ribs. Lucky. Your husband was already scrolling again, his attention gone before the conversation had even moved on.

“He lets you do whatever you want,” your aunt continued. “If I told my husband I wanted to knock down a wall, he’d spend six months debating it.”

Everyone seemed amused by the idea. Everyone except you.

You managed a smile because it was easier than explaining. Easier than saying that being ignored wasn’t the same thing as being supported. Easier than admitting that you would have welcomed an argument at this point. An opinion. A preference. Anything that suggested he cared about the life the two of you were supposedly building together.

The wall layout was yours. The flooring was yours. The appliances were yours. The paint colors were yours. The furniture was yours. Sometimes it felt as though the entire dream belonged to you alone.

Your cousin was still talking. “I swear, if mine let me choose everything, I’d be thrilled.”

You gave a small laugh at the appropriate moment. Nobody noticed how tired it sounded… Because from the outside, it looked wonderful. You had a beautiful house. A husband who never fought you on decisions. A future everyone assumed was taking shape exactly the way you’d planned.

You glanced across the table again. Your husband’s gaze remained fixed on his phone. Whatever was happening there clearly held more interest than discussions about the home you’d spent years dreaming about.

For a moment, a thought surfaced that you immediately tried to push away. If you sold the house tomorrow, would he even care? The question unsettled you enough that you reached for your wine glass. Of course he would…  He had to. This was your future. Your marriage. Your home.

Yet as the conversation flowed around you and your husband continued scrolling through his phone, you found yourself wondering when he’d last sounded excited about any of it… You couldn’t remember.

The realization lingered long after dinner ended, following you all the way home, where the plans for your dream house sat neatly organized on the kitchen counter. You stared at them while your husband disappeared upstairs without a second glance.

*******

Monday arrived with the kind of nervous excitement that had kept you awake half the night.

The renovation had been planned for so long that it hardly felt real anymore. For months, the project had existed as sketches, samples, measurements, and endless decisions. Now there were trucks in the driveway, equipment being unloaded, and actual walls that were about to come down.

You stood on the porch with a mug of coffee wrapped between both hands as a pickup rolled to a stop. The driver’s door opened first. Joel climbed out, already carrying a folder under one arm. You’d met him three times before this. Once when he’d come out to measure the house. Again when he’d spent nearly two hours walking through every room while you explained what you wanted. And a third time when you’d signed the contract after interviewing several different companies and somehow finding yourself trusting his judgment more than anyone else’s.

Tommy emerged from the passenger side a second later. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

A grin spread across his face as he looked at the house.

“Still standing.”

“Barely.”

“Good. Gives us something to do.”

You laughed.

The crew began unloading tools while Joel crossed the driveway toward you.

“You ready?”

The question made you glance back at the house.

“No.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Good answer.”

“Ask me again in six months.”

“Then you’ll tell me no for different reasons.”

“Probably.”

He nodded toward the front door.

“Let’s take one last look before everybody starts making holes in things.”

Together, you headed inside.

Within minutes, plans were spread across the kitchen island while crew members moved in and out carrying equipment.

“Okay, so this wall is coming down.”

You pointed to the blueprint.

“And I’d like the opening a little wider than we originally discussed. Not much. Maybe another foot.”

Joel studied the drawing.

“That shouldn’t be a problem.”

Relief immediately softened your shoulders.

“Really?”

“Mm.”

He looked toward the wall in question.

“Might require moving one electrical line, but I’d rather do that now than have you regret it later.”

“Exactly.”

The front door opened. You looked up automatically.

Mark came downstairs while buttoning the cuff of his shirt, laptop bag hanging from one shoulder. He made it halfway into the kitchen before slowing. His eyes moved from you to the plans spread across the island. Then to Joel. Then Tommy. Then to the crew carrying equipment through the house.

“Oh.” A faint frown appeared. “Today’s the day?”

The words hit harder than they should have.

Your smile faltered for the briefest moment. “Yeah.”

For a second, he looked genuinely surprised. “Right.” One hand ran through his hair. “Sorry. I completely forgot.”

Nobody said anything. Joel’s expression remained neutral. Tommy suddenly seemed fascinated by the tape measure in his hand.

You forced a small laugh. “It’s okay.”

And maybe it should have been. People forgot things. Work got busy. Life happened.

Except this wasn’t a dentist appointment or a dinner reservation. This was the renovation. The thing you’d spent months talking about. The thing you’d discussed over breakfast, over dinner, while watching television, and lying in bed at night. The thing that seemed to occupy half your thoughts. Yet somehow he’d forgotten it was starting today.

Mark stepped closer to the island. “So what’s first?”

The question sounded sincere. That almost made it worse.

You pointed to the plans. “We’re opening this wall up.”

“Huh.” He looked at the drawing for a few seconds before nodding. “That’ll look nice.”

Joel glanced down at the plans. “She’s thinking about widening the opening another foot.”

Mark followed the line on the blueprint. “If that’s what you want, sounds good.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” A smile tugged at his mouth. “You’ve spent way more time thinking about this house than I have.”

The comment wasn’t meant to be hurtful. Everyone seemed to take it as a joke. You smiled too. Mostly out of habit. Because the truth was that somewhere along the way, ‘you’ve got better taste than me’ had become ‘you decide’.

And ‘you decide’ had eventually become ‘I don’t need to be involved’.

Mark checked his watch and muttered a curse under his breath. “I’m late.”

You weren’t surprised. He usually was. He grabbed his travel mug from the counter before turning toward Joel.

“Sorry I’m disappearing on day one.”

“We’ll still be here tomorrow,” Joel replied.

That earned a brief laugh. “Fair.” Mark adjusted the strap of his laptop bag. “My office is down the hall.”

Joel nodded.

“We’ll seal everything off before demolition starts.”

“Appreciate it.” Mark pointed vaguely toward the hallway. “Just don’t fill the place with drywall dust. That’s where I hide during conference calls.”

Tommy chuckled. Joel smiled politely. You did too. Then Mark stepped toward you. The kiss landed on your forehead. Automatic enough that neither of you had to think about it.

By the time he pulled away, he was already reaching for his keys.

“See you tonight.”

“Bye.”

The front door closed behind him. A few moments later, his car disappeared down the driveway.

The kitchen grew quiet enough that you suddenly became aware of how warm your coffee mug felt in your hands.

You looked back down at the plans.

“So.” Your finger moved to another section. “I was thinking about adding pull-out shelving in the pantry.”

Joel followed the line of your finger.

“That’s a good idea.”

“If you’ve got the space, you’ll use it,” Tommy added.

You smiled. The knot that had settled in your chest eased slightly.

Outside, someone started up a saw. The renovation had officially begun. And although you couldn’t have explained why, it felt strangely easier to think about pantry shelves than the fact that your husband had forgotten the day your dream house finally started becoming real.

****

Joel had renovated houses for most of his adult life. Some projects stayed with him. Most didn’t. You tore out a wall, replaced some flooring, updated a kitchen, collected a check, and moved on to the next job. After a while, the houses blurred together.

This one should have done the same. Instead, three months later, Joel could have walked through the entire floor plan without looking at a single blueprint.

He knew where every electrical line ran, which floorboards creaked in the hallway, and exactly how many times you’d changed your mind about cabinet hardware before finally settling on a choice. The fact that he knew that last detail at all was something Tommy found endlessly amusing.

“You know that’s weird, right?”

Joel continued checking measurements. “What is?”

“The fact that you know more about this woman’s house than your own.”

Joel didn’t bother looking up. “That’s called doin’ my job.”

“Mhm.”

“It is.”

Tommy leaned against a stack of drywall with the expression of a man who was enjoying himself far too much.

“You got opinions on her pantry.”

“I got opinions on everybody’s pantry.”

“Sure you do.”

The problem was that Tommy wasn’t entirely wrong. There was something unusually satisfying about this project, and a lot of that came down to you.

Most homeowners cared about the end result. Very few cared about the process. They picked things because they were trendy, expensive, or because somebody on television had told them they should. You thought about things. Every decision had a purpose behind it.

The expanded pantry wasn’t about resale value. It was because you’d grown up in a house where storage always seemed to be in short supply. The reading nook beneath the front window existed because you’d always wanted one. The larger kitchen island wasn’t there because it looked impressive in a magazine. You wanted enough space for family dinners, holiday baking, and the life you imagined unfolding inside the house years from now.

You were building a home, not a showroom. Joel respected that. More than he probably should.

Living through a renovation wasn’t easy, yet somehow you’d managed to stay remarkably cheerful through most of it. Every morning, you emerged from whichever corner of the house wasn’t currently being demolished, coffee in hand and plans already forming in your head.

By the second month, you’d become part of the crew’s routine. Not literally, nobody would ever mistake you for a contractor. But there was rarely a day when you weren’t standing beside Joel discussing measurements, paint samples, shelving options, or whatever new idea had occurred to you overnight.

Unlike many homeowners he’d worked with, you actually listened when he explained why something wouldn’t work. If he suggested a better solution, you considered it instead of treating every recommendation like a personal challenge. It made the entire project easier. Unfortunately, Tommy had noticed. Which meant Joel never heard the end of it.

One afternoon, you appeared in the doorway carrying a folder of flooring samples while Joel was finishing trim work in the living room.

Tommy saw you first.

“Oh, there she is.” Joel kept working. “You gonna pretend you weren’t wondering where she’d gone?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Joel.”

“I wasn’t.”

Tommy’s grin widened. “You’ve looked toward that hallway six times in the last ten minutes.”

Joel considered several responses, but none of them would improve the situation. So he kept working while Tommy laughed himself into a near collapse against the wall.

The crush irritated him. He was far too old for this nonsense. More importantly, you were married. That should have been the end of it. Yet every week seemed to provide another reason for him to like you.

The fact that your husband was a fucking idiot only made everything worse. Mark wasn’t openly rude. Joel would have understood rude. What he couldn’t quite understand was how detached the man seemed from a project that consumed so much of your life.

Over the months, he saw him often enough. Most encounters lasted only a few minutes before work pulled him elsewhere, but every interaction left Joel with the same impression: Mark occupied the house, you lived in it. There was a difference.

One evening, you’d spent nearly half an hour debating countertop samples spread across the temporary folding table serving as your kitchen. After eliminating option after option, you’d finally pointed to one of them.

“Mark likes the darker one.”

Joel looked up. “He does?”

You smiled. “Yeah.” The answer sounded obvious to you. “He picked it.”

And for reasons Joel couldn’t entirely explain, that surprised him. Because it was one of the first times he’d heard your husband express a strong opinion about any part of the renovation.

The realization stayed with him longer than it should have. Maybe because it reminded him that marriages looked different from the inside than they did from the outside. Maybe because it was easier to be annoyed with a stranger than admit he didn’t actually know anything about your relationship. Still, the feeling lingered.

Not that Mark was necessarily a bad husband. Just that whenever something exciting happened in the house, you seemed to experience it alone.

The worst part was that the renovation itself wasn’t helping. Every week transformed another section of the house. Walls disappeared. Rooms opened up. Light reached places it hadn’t before. The home slowly became what you’d always imagined, and every time a new stage was completed, your face lit up with the same excitement you’d had on the day demolition began.

Most people eventually stopped noticing the work. You never did. You noticed every detail, every improvement, every inch of progress. And every time you smiled at something you’d dreamed into existence months earlier, Joel felt an unreasonable amount of satisfaction.

One evening, after you’d spent twenty minutes enthusiastically discussing the built-in bookshelves before finally heading upstairs, Tommy waited until you were out of earshot.

Then he looked at Joel. “You got it bad.”

Joel sighed. “Would you shut up?”

“Nope.” Tommy’s grin only widened. “You’re building her a dream house.”

“I’m building a house.”

“You remember what kind of cabinet handles she picked.”

Joel immediately regretted responding… Because Tommy’s expression brightened with victory.

“There it is.”

“Tommy.”

“The woman changes her mind one time and you remember every detail.”

“Three times.” The words escaped before Joel could stop them. Tommy stared at him. Joel closed his eyes. “Damn it.”

The laughter that followed echoed through the unfinished living room while Joel seriously considered whether homicide between brothers was still illegal in Texas.

******

Joel had spent most of the afternoon installing shelving in what would eventually become the mudroom. It was the kind of work he liked. Simple. Precise. Something he could focus on without having to think too much.

The rest of the crew had already left for the day, leaving only the sound of a drill, the occasional thud from upstairs, and the distant hum of the air conditioning struggling to keep up with the Texas heat.

He heard your voices before he registered the words.  At first, he paid no attention. Couples argued. It wasn’t his business. The house echoed more than usual with half the walls still exposed, which meant conversations carried farther than they normally would.

Joel reached for another screw and deliberately turned on the drill. The noise drowned everything out for a few seconds. Then it stopped… And so did the argument. For approximately three seconds.

“What do you want me to say?” Mark’s voice carried clearly from the kitchen.

Joel closed his eyes. Damn it. He reached for a measuring tape. Focused on the shelving. Focused very hard. Unfortunately, the house had other plans.

“I don’t want you to say anything.” Your voice sounded strained. “I want you to give a shit.”

Mark laughed. A short, frustrated sound. “Seriously?”

Joel picked up a hammer. Anything loud. Anything.

“You got exactly what you wanted.”

The hammer stopped halfway through a swing.

“You picked the layout.”

Thunk.

“You picked the cabinets.”

Thunk.

“The flooring.”

Thunk.

“The countertops.”

Thunk.

“What more do you want?”

The hammer suddenly felt ridiculous in his hand. Because even over the noise, he could hear the hurt in your voice.

“That’s not even the point!”

“Then what is the fucking point?”

Joel stared at the unfinished wall in front of him. 

The conversation should have ended there. Instead, it shifted.

“You don’t give a damn about any of it!” The words emerged quieter this time, which somehow made them easier to hear. “You barely know what’s happening in your own house!”

He heard a sharp exhale, and then Mark again. “Jesus Christ. The fucking house isn’t the problem.”

The sentence hung in the air.

When you spoke again, your voice sounded thinner. “It isn’t.”

Joel wished very badly that he couldn’t hear this.

“I can’t keep doing this.”

The words came from Mark. Firm and final. Silence stretched between you. Then you answered.

“You mean the baby?”

Nobody spoke. The quiet that followed felt heavier than the argument itself.

Finally Mark sighed. A long, irritated sound. “Yeah.”

You laughed once. A sharp, disbelieving sound. “Are you serious?”

“Completely.”

Joel heard movement. A chair scraping against the floor.

“I think we need to stop.”

“Stop trying?”

The words came out flat. As though he were discussing a subscription service. Not the thing you’d spent years hoping for.

“Jesus Christ, Mark.”

“What?”

“What!?” Your voice rose. “You don’t get to drop that into a conversation like it’s nothing!”

“I’m saying it’s adding stress that we don’t need.”

The answer came immediately. Like he’d rehearsed it. Joel’s grip tightened around the drill in his hand.

“Stress?” You sounded stunned.

“Yes. Stress.”

“Mark, you’re barely even here!”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Joel closed his eyes.

“Seriously.” Your voice cracked. “You’re gone constantly.”

“I work.”

“You disappear!”

“I work!”

“No!” The answer came fast and certain. “You leave before I wake up, come home after I’ve gone to bed, cancel plans every other week, and somehow you’re standing there telling me that trying for a baby is what’s stressful?”

The kitchen fell silent.

Then Mark laughed. “You always do this.”

“Do what?”

“Turn everything around.”

Joel heard footsteps. Closer.

“You want to know what’s exhausting?” Mark continued. “You never let anything go.”

“Excuse me?”

“This.” Mark gestured. Joel could hear it in the movement. “This conversation.” His voice rose. “Every conversation.”

“You brought it up!”

“Because somebody has to!”

Your voice shook. “We could have talked about this.”

“We are talking about it.”

“No, Mark.”

Joel had never heard you sound like that before. Hurt.

“Talking would’ve happened six months ago.” Silence. “Talking would’ve happened before you started avoiding me.”

The words seemed to hit something. Mark’s voice hardened immediately. “I am not avoiding you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You barely even touch me anymore!”

The kitchen became so quiet Joel could hear the hum of the refrigerator. When Mark answered, his voice came out sharper than before.

“Because every damn thing turns into this!”

Your breath caught. “What does that even mean?”

“It means exactly what I said.” His frustration finally spilled over. “You know what? I’m just sick of it.”

“Sick of what??”

“Tired of everything revolving around a baby.”

Joel shut his eyes.

“Everything? Mark, we’ve barely even tried for a few months! You’re almost never here to try anyway!”

Silence.

“You’re just twisting everything, again.”

“Mark-”

“No.” He cut you off. “You want the truth?” The house seemed to shrink. “I can’t do this. You’ll make this the center of your entire life, just like you did with the house.”

The words were cruel. Joel knew it. The moment they left Mark’s mouth, he knew it. And judging by the silence that followed, so did you.

When you finally spoke, your voice sounded small. “I want a family.”

“I know.”

“With you.”

Something shifted. Something ugly. Because Mark didn’t answer immediately.

Joel found himself staring at the unfinished wall in front of him. Waiting. And when Mark finally spoke, his voice carried none of the softness that sentence deserved.

“Well, maybe it’s time to accept that you can’t get everything you want.”

The silence afterward felt endless. A moment later Mark appeared in the hallway. Joel barely had time to straighten before he walked past.

Your husband looked immaculate. Pressed shirt. Expensive watch. Laptop bag over one shoulder. The image of a successful professional heading off to another meeting.

He didn’t seem embarrassed or upset. Didn’t even seem to notice Joel standing ten feet away.

“See you tomorrow.”

The words were tossed over his shoulder toward the house in general. Then he was gone. The front door slammed. A car engine started.

Silence settled again. This time it stayed.

Joel stood motionless for several seconds. Part of him knew he should keep working. Another part knew he should leave. Instead, he found himself glancing toward the kitchen. Just once.

You were standing on the opposite side of the island. One hand braced against the countertop. The other pressed against your stomach. Your eyes were closed. And judging by the way your chest rose and fell, you were concentrating very hard on breathing normally.

Joel looked away immediately. Not because he didn’t care. Because he did. Far more than he should.

He stared at the shelving in front of him and tried to focus on the measurements. Three and a half inches. That was the gap he was supposed to be checking. Three and a half inches. For some reason, the number refused to stay in his head.

What stayed instead was the sound of your voice when you’d said with you. 

Joel had gone into plenty of homes over the years. He’d seen marriages at their best and marriages at their worst. Couples fought over budgets, timelines, paint colors, and things that made no sense to anyone except the people involved. This hadn’t sounded like that. This sounded like a woman trying desperately to save a conversation while her husband was already halfway out the door.

The realization sat heavily in his chest. He hated it. Hated that he’d heard any of it. Hated that he was thinking about it at all. And most of all, hated the flicker of anger that rose every time he remembered Mark’s voice.

“Maybe it’s time to accept that you can’t get everything you want.”

Jesus Christ. Who said that to their wife? Who said that and then grabbed their car keys and left? Joel dragged a hand over his face. None of it was his business. That was the important thing. Not his marriage. Not his wife. Not his life.

The thought should have settled the matter. It didn’t. Because when he finally risked another glance toward the kitchen, you were still standing there exactly where he’d left you, gripping the edge of the island as though it were the only thing holding you upright.

Joel didn’t think twice and walked in, stopped beside the plans spread across the island.

“Question.”

You looked up. For a brief moment, he could still see the argument written across your face. Not tears. Something harder than that. The effort it was taking not to cry. Then your expression smoothed into something more neutral.

“What?”

“The mudroom cabinets.”

It wasn’t a complete lie, but it wasn’t exactly urgent either. Joel already knew the answer before he asked.

“The ones near the garage?”

“Yeah.” He flipped open his notebook and glanced down at it as though he were checking measurements. “If we shift them over six inches, we’d have room for a bench.”

Your attention immediately dropped to the plans. “A bench?”

Joel nodded. “For shoes.”

You frowned thoughtfully and studied the drawing for a few moments, following the measurements with your finger. “Could we still fit the storage cubbies?”

“There’d be enough room.”

“Huh.”

The silence that followed felt different from the one he’d walked into. Lighter.

You leaned over the plans. “That’d actually be useful.”

Joel shrugged. “Thought so.”

And just like that, the conversation shifted onto safer ground. For the next several minutes, the two of you discussed bench dimensions, coat hooks, storage cubbies, and whether the bench should extend all the way beneath the window. None of it was particularly important, but that was precisely the point.

Sometimes normal conversation was a kindness.

Eventually, a small laugh escaped you. “I can’t believe we’re spending this much time discussing where people put their shoes.”

Joel snorted. “You’d be surprised.”

“No, seriously.” You pointed at the plans. “We’ve spent at least twenty minutes on this.”

“Closer to forty.”

That earned another laugh, this one sounding a little more genuine than the first.

The tension in the room eased almost imperceptibly. You still looked tired, and whatever hurt Mark had left behind hadn’t disappeared, but for the first time since he’d walked into the kitchen, you looked like yourself again.

Joel closed the notebook. “Anyway, I’ll move it over.”

You nodded. “Okay.”

He had almost reached the doorway when your voice stopped him.

“Joel.”

He turned back. “Yeah?”

The gratitude on your face was subtle enough that somebody else might not have noticed it. Joel did.

“Thanks.”

You didn’t explain what you were thanking him for. He didn’t ask. Because the bench wasn’t really the point.

“Don’t thank me yet.” A faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “You haven’t seen my coat hook ideas.”

You rolled your eyes immediately. “Oh, God.”

“That’s what everybody says.”

The sound that left you this time was unmistakably a laugh.

When Joel left the kitchen a few moments later, the argument was still there. Nothing had been fixed. Nothing had been solved. But you weren’t standing alone at the island trying to remember how to breathe anymore, and for the moment, that felt like enough.

************

The house kept getting better. That was the strange part. With every passing week, another piece of it fell into place. Fresh paint replaced exposed drywall. Cabinets appeared where there had once been empty framing. Light fixtures went up, floors were finished, and the kitchen that had existed for months as measurements on paper finally began looking like the room you’d imagined from the beginning.

The house was becoming beautiful. You weren’t.

The realization crept up on Joel gradually enough that he almost missed it at first. Living through a renovation wasn’t exactly relaxing, and he’d spent enough years in construction to know that homeowners often looked worn down by the end of a project. 

For a while, he told himself you were simply tired. Then he assumed work must be busy. After that, he stopped trying to explain it away. The months kept passing. You kept looking worse.

The dark circles beneath your eyes grew more noticeable with every week, and there were mornings when it looked as though you hadn’t slept at all. You still smiled. You still thanked people. Every now and then, you still brought coffee for the crew or got excited about some new detail that had finally been completed. The difference was that the excitement never seemed to last.

Joel noticed it most in the moments when you thought nobody was paying attention. The second a conversation ended, your shoulders would sag slightly, as though holding yourself together required more effort than it used to. Sometimes he’d glance up from his work and find you staring out a window or into space, your expression distant enough that he wondered where your thoughts had gone.

Meanwhile, Mark appeared less and less.

At first, Joel assumed your schedules simply weren’t lining up. The man worked long hours and traveled often enough that missing him for a few days wasn’t particularly unusual. Eventually, though, Joel started realizing entire weeks could pass without seeing him. Maybe that was normal… Maybe it wasn’t.

What Joel knew for certain was that the house was nearing completion, and most people in Mark’s position would’ve been counting down the days. Instead, he seemed almost entirely absent from the process.

One afternoon, Tommy climbed down from a ladder, stretched his back, and glanced toward the driveway.

“Haven’t seen Prince Charming in a while.”

Joel continued measuring trim without looking up. “Mm.”

Tommy snorted. “That’s my professional observation.”

“Good thing nobody pays you for your observations.”

“They should.”

Joel rolled his eyes and returned to work.

The truth was that he’d noticed too. He just preferred not to think about it. Because every time he did, he found himself looking toward you. And every time he looked toward you, he saw somebody trying very hard to convince the world she was fine.

The house, meanwhile, had become something special. Even Joel had to admit that.

The reading nook beneath the front window had turned out exactly the way you’d envisioned it. The kitchen felt open and welcoming without losing its warmth. The built-in shelves stretched beautifully across the living room wall, and the mudroom bench had become one of Joel’s favorite details despite Tommy mocking him relentlessly for caring so much about a bench.

Months earlier, the place had been a construction site. Now it looked like a home. The kind people dreamed about. The kind people imagined raising families in. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Especially not lately.

One afternoon, Joel arrived earlier than most of the crew. The house was unusually quiet, enough so that he initially wondered whether you’d already left for work.

Then he stepped into the living room. The new sofa had been delivered a few days earlier and sat facing the fireplace, surrounded by furniture that was finally beginning to make the space feel lived-in.

You were sitting there alone. A thick folder rested open in your lap. Although your eyes were fixed on the pages, it didn’t look as though you’d turned one in a while.

For a moment, Joel considered backing out of the room. Something about the scene felt private. Then you looked up. The movement was slow enough that it almost seemed as though you’d forgotten somebody else was there.

And Jesus. You looked exhausted. Not the kind of tiredness that disappeared after a good night’s sleep. The kind that settled into a person’s bones and stayed there.

Joel frowned before he could stop himself. “You alright?”

Your gaze dropped back to the folder. For a second, he expected the usual answer. A smile. A joke. Some variation of ‘I’m fine’.

“Not really.”

The honesty of it surprised him enough that he took another step into the room. His eyes flicked toward the folder.

“What is it?” he asked.

Your fingers tightened around the folder. For several seconds, you didn’t answer. Joel remained where he was, close enough that walking away would have felt strange, far enough that it didn’t feel like he was intruding. The silence stretched between you while your eyes remained fixed on the papers in your lap.

Then you let out a laugh. Not because anything was funny. The sound escaped you the way a sigh might.

“Mark left.”

Something in your voice made Joel’s stomach tighten immediately. His eyes flicked toward the folder.

“What do you mean?”

You stared down at the papers for a moment longer before answering. “He left.”

The words sounded simple enough on their own. They weren’t. Joel frowned.

“For work?”

You laughed again. This time the sound cracked. “No.” Your fingers shifted against the edge of the folder. “I mean he left me.”

The realization hit him a second before you said it. “Oh.”

The room seemed to grow quieter.

You nodded once. “He packed a bag.” Your gaze remained fixed somewhere beyond the papers. “He told me he wasn’t coming back.”

Joel felt something cold settle in his chest. The words weren’t dramatic. You weren’t crying. You weren’t shouting. For some reason, that made them worse.

“What happened?”

When you finally spoke, your voice sounded tired. The kind of tired that went deeper than sleep.

“He brought these.”

You held the folder out slightly. Joel looked down at it. Divorce papers. His jaw tightened immediately.

“When?”

“This morning.” You swallowed. “Before he left.”

Joel stared at the documents for a second before looking back at you. The exhaustion he’d been watching settle over you for months suddenly made a lot more sense.

“He just handed them to you?”

A faint smile touched your mouth. There was no humor in it.

“Pretty much.” The laugh that followed sounded brittle. “We had coffee.” You shook your head slightly. The disbelief was still there. “He sat at that table.” Your eyes drifted toward the dining room. “The one we spent three months arguing over.”

Joel remained silent.

“He drank his coffee.” The smile vanished. “Then he handed me divorce papers.”

The simplicity of it made Joel want to put his fist through a wall.

Instead, he asked quietly: “What did he say?”

You looked down again. The answer seemed to take effort. “He said he wasn’t happy.”

Joel closed his eyes briefly. Of course he did. People always seemed to find polite language when they were about to do something ugly.

“He said we’d grown apart.” The bitterness in your voice had finally surfaced. “He said we wanted different things.”

Joel didn’t trust himself to speak. The room fell quiet again.

Then you added: “He’s in love with someone else.”

There it was. The thing Joel had suspected for months without ever wanting to believe. Not because he thought highly of Mark. Because he knew how much hearing it would hurt.

His gaze stayed on you. “How long?”

Your shoulders rose and fell. “He says six months.” The answer came with a hollow smile. “Maybe.”

Joel frowned. “Maybe?”

You looked away. Toward the kitchen. Toward the beautiful house that had consumed nearly a year of your life.

“I don’t know.” The words came out quietly. “Honestly, I don’t know anything anymore.”

You rubbed at your forehead.

“He cheated before.” Joel froze. Your eyes remained on the floor. “Three years ago.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly. Not because affairs were unheard of. Because suddenly everything he’d witnessed over the past several months looked different. The exhaustion. The anxiety. The way you always seemed to be waiting for bad news.

“Not this woman,” you continued. “Someone else.”

Joel stared. “And you stayed.”

You laughed softly. “I loved him.” The answer was immediate. Simple. Honest. “I thought we fixed it.” For the first time since the conversation had begun, your voice cracked. “I thought we’d survived it.”

Joel looked away. Because there was something unbearable about the certainty with which you’d once believed that.

The silence stretched again. When you spoke next, your voice had grown even quieter.

“I spent months wondering what I was doing wrong.” Your fingers tightened around the folder. “Why he never came home.” The next sentence hurt even more. “Why he stopped touching me.”

Joel lowered his gaze. Not out of embarrassment. Because the pain in your voice was difficult to listen to.

“I thought it was stress.” A bitter laugh escaped you. “I thought it was work.”

Neither of you spoke for several seconds. Then you swallowed. And finally said the thing that seemed to hurt most.

“She’s pregnant.”

Joel felt every muscle in his body go still. You weren’t looking at him anymore.

Your gaze remained fixed on the papers in your lap.

“He’s leaving because she’s pregnant.”

For a moment, all Joel could think about was the argument he’d overheard months ago. The baby. The months of trying. The way you’d sounded when you’d said with you.

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Mark wanted to stop trying because he already knew.

A slow wave of anger settled in Joel’s chest. Not the explosive kind. The cold kind. The kind that stayed.

You let out another humorless laugh. “The best part?”

Joel wasn’t sure there could possibly be a worse part.

You looked up anyway. Your eyes were shining now. “They’re getting married.”

He stared at you. You stared back. The fight seemed to leave you all at once. Your shoulders sagged. The folder slipped closed in your lap.

And when you spoke again, your voice sounded almost unbearably fragile.

“I spent months trying to have a baby with my husband.” Joel’s chest tightened at your voice. “And apparently all he needed was someone else.”

The words hung in the air between you. Joel’s gaze drifted around the room. The room you’d designed. The room you’d fought for. The room you’d spent months dreaming into existence.

Everywhere he looked, he saw evidence of you. The shelves. The paint. The furniture. The details nobody else would ever notice.

And all he could think was that Mark was an idiot. A complete fucking idiot.

The feeling hit him so hard it almost surprised him. Because the truth was that Joel had spent months forcing himself not to think about you. Every time he caught himself looking for your truck in the driveway, every time he found himself wanting to tell you something before anyone else, every time Tommy made one of his stupid comments, he’d reminded himself of the same thing.

You were married. That should have been enough. For a long time, it had been.

But sitting here now, listening to you talk about a husband who barely came home, a mistress, a pregnancy, and divorce papers dropped on your kitchen table like a business transaction, Joel found that whatever patience he’d had left for Mark had finally run out.

You were still staring at the folder. Still blaming yourself. Still looking for reasons.

And suddenly he couldn’t stand it anymore. “He’s a damn fool.”

Your head lifted. Joel met your gaze. The anger was still there, simmering beneath the surface, but there was something else mixed into it now. Something he’d spent months trying not to acknowledge.

“That man is a damn fool.”

You stared at him. Then you gave a small, humorless laugh. “You don’t have to say that.”

“Yeah.” Joel leaned forward slightly. “I do.” His voice had gone rough. “Because I’ve been listenin’ to you talk for ten minutes and all I can think is that he’s out of his goddamn mind.”

Something flickered across your face. Surprise. Disbelief. Maybe both.

Joel dragged a hand across his jaw. He should stop talking. He knew that. Instead he heard himself continue.

“Do you have any idea how hard it’s been?” 

Your brows pulled together. “How hard what’s been?”

Joel laughed once. A short, disbelieving sound. “Not thinkin' ‘bout you.”

The silence that followed felt enormous.

The second the words left his mouth, Joel wanted them back. Not because they weren’t true. Because they were. You simply stared at him. And now that he’d said it, he found he couldn’t quite retreat.

“I tried.” His eyes stayed on yours. “For months.”

Your pulse jumped visibly in your throat and he noticed.

“Every mornin’ I’d remind myself you’re married.” His mouth twisted. “Tommy thought it was hilarious.”

That earned the faintest flicker of a smile. Joel’s heart nearly stopped at the sight of it.

“You deserve somebody who actually sees you.” The words came quietly this time. Not angry anymore. Honest. “You know that?”

You looked away first. Joel wished you hadn’t. Because seeing the hurt on your face was difficult enough. Seeing hope was worse.

His voice dropped. “You’re smart.” 

You swallowed. “Joel…”

“You’re funny.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Stubborn as hell.” Despite everything, you let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. Joel shook his head. “And you’re beautiful.”

The room went still. The words hung there. Undeniable. Impossible to take back.

Your eyes found his again. And something changed. Enough that the air suddenly felt warmer. Enough that Joel became acutely aware of how close the two of you were.

Joel wished you hadn’t looked at him like that. Because for the first time, he wasn’t seeing surprise in your eyes… He was seeing the exact same thing he was feeling.

The silence stretched between you while the room seemed to shrink around it. Joel could feel his pulse in his throat, could see the uncertainty in your expression, the way you seemed caught between wanting to step back and wanting to do the exact opposite.

You took a step toward him. Joel didn’t move. He knew he should. He knew exactly why this was a terrible idea. You’d been handed divorce papers a few hours ago. You were hurting. Heartbroken. Vulnerable. Every sensible part of him was screaming at him to put some distance between the two of you.

Instead he just looked at you. And when you stopped in front of him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of your body, neither of you pretended anymore.

Your eyes dropped briefly to his mouth. Joel saw it. The look that followed left absolutely no room for misunderstanding. You weren’t backing away. Neither was he.

His hand had already started to lift. Not because he’d decided to touch you. Because every part of him was being pulled toward you.

Joel could already imagine exactly how it would happen. The slight tilt of your head. His hand against your cheek. The first kiss he’d spent months refusing to think about. For one suspended moment, it felt inevitable.

Then the front door slammed. The sound cracked through the house like a gunshot. Both of you jumped. A second later, Tommy’s voice echoed from the hallway.

“Joel?”

The moment shattered instantly. You stepped back so quickly it almost hurt to watch.

Joel scrubbed a hand across his face. “Yeah.”

Tommy rounded the corner carrying a roll of plans. His eyes moved from Joel to you. Then to the tiny distance separating you. Then back again.

“Oh.”

Joel closed his eyes. “Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You were about to.”

Tommy’s grin appeared immediately.

You made a small, mortified sound, clutched the folder to your chest, and pointed vaguely toward the hallway. “I should go…”

Nobody knew where... Including you. But a second later you were gone. Joel watched you disappear around the corner before turning slowly toward his brother.

Tommy looked entirely too pleased with himself. And somehow, Joel knew his day had just gotten a whole lot worse.

***********

The divorce moved faster than you thought possible.

At first, you’d assumed it would take months. There would be delays, negotiations, arguments through lawyers, and endless waiting. Instead, Mark seemed determined to get through the process as quickly as humanly possible. Documents appeared almost immediately. Meetings were scheduled. Signatures were requested. Every week brought another reminder that the life you’d spent years building together was being dismantled piece by piece.

Part of you couldn’t shake the suspicion that he’d been planning this for much longer than you’d known. The thought hurt too much to examine for very long.

What made you truly angry, however, wasn’t the divorce. It was the house.

The house had never belonged to Mark. Not legally. Not in any meaningful sense. You’d inherited it from your grandmother years before you met him. The property had always been yours. Every lawyer involved knew it. Every document proved it. There was never a scenario where Mark was walking away with ownership. That didn’t stop him from trying.

The first time your lawyer mentioned it, you genuinely thought she’d misunderstood something.

“He wants the house.”

You stared at her. “What?”

She glanced down at her notes. “He knows it isn’t a realistic request, but he’s asking whether you’d consider selling it to him.”

You laughed. Not because it was funny. Because the audacity of it left you speechless.

The house. Your house. The house you’d inherited. The house he’d barely shown any interest in until another woman apparently decided she liked it. The realization came a few days later when your lawyer called again. This time she sounded irritated.

“His attorney says they were hoping to keep the property because his fiancée is very fond of it.”

You actually put the phone down for several seconds, just to make sure you’d heard correctly. Then you picked it back up.

“His what?”

“His fiancée.”

The word hit harder than it should have. Not because you hadn’t known he intended to marry her. Because hearing someone refer to her that way made everything feel horribly real.

You spent the rest of that week furious, because somewhere along the way, Mark had apparently decided he could take your marriage, your future, your years, and then walk away with your house too.

In the end, he got absolutely nothing. The house remained yours. The victory felt surprisingly hollow. By then, you’d already started realizing that winning and being happy weren’t remotely the same thing.

The day the divorce became official arrived on a Thursday morning. The hearing itself lasted less than an hour. Papers were reviewed. Signatures were confirmed. A judge said a handful of sentences that neither of you would remember five minutes later. Then it was over. Six years of marriage reduced to paperwork.

You left the building feeling oddly numb. For several minutes, you simply stood outside staring at the parking lot while people walked past carrying coffees and briefcases as though nothing important had happened.

Then you saw her. At first, she was just another woman sitting on a bench near the entrance. One hand rested absentmindedly against the curve of her stomach while she looked down at her phone.

Pregnant. Very pregnant. The sight alone was enough to make something twist painfully inside your chest. Then Mark walked toward her. And everything clicked into place.

You stopped moving. The woman looked up. Her face immediately brightened. Mark smiled back. The ease of it nearly knocked the breath out of you. There was no guilt. No hesitation. No awkwardness. Just happiness. Like this was exactly where he wanted to be.

You watched him lean down to kiss her lips. Watched him crouch beside her to say something that made her laugh. Watched him rest a hand against her stomach with an expression you’d spent years hoping to see directed toward you.

And for one terrible second, all you could think was that he’d never looked that excited with you.

The realization followed you all the way home. After that, something inside you quietly gave up. Not in a dramatic way. You still got out of bed. Still answered emails. Still met with lawyers and signed forms and handled everything that needed handling.

But the hope was gone. The part of you that kept looking for an explanation finally stopped.

Meanwhile, the house continued inching toward completion. The crew was finishing the last major details. Paint touch-ups remained. Some built-ins still needed final work. Fixtures were being installed. Every week brought another piece of the vision you’d spent so long creating.

The closer it came to being finished, the harder it became to look at. Because now you could see exactly what it was supposed to have been.

Joel remained a constant presence through all of it. Not because he inserted himself into your life. If anything, he seemed determined to do the opposite.

After what had almost happened in the living room, neither of you mentioned it again. Not once. Which somehow made it impossible to forget.

Every conversation carried an awareness of it. Every glance. Every moment the two of you found yourselves alone. You couldn’t look at him without remembering how close you’d been. How badly you’d wanted him to kiss you.

The memory embarrassed you far more than it should have. Not because you regretted it… That would’ve been easier. The problem was that you’d wanted it before the divorce. Before the papers. Before any of this.

You’d been looking forward to seeing Joel long before your marriage officially ended, and the realization left you feeling ashamed in ways you couldn’t quite explain.

It didn’t matter that logic told you none of this had started because of Joel. It didn’t matter that Mark had already been halfway out the door. The guilt lingered anyway.

As a result, you became careful. Careful with your smiles. Careful with your conversations. Careful with your eyes whenever Joel happened to look at you for a little too long.

Sometimes you’d catch him watching you. Sometimes he’d catch you doing exactly the same thing. Neither of you ever acknowledged it. The unspoken thing between you continued growing anyway. Which was exactly why you knew you had to leave.

The thought arrived gradually. Then all at once. One evening, you found yourself sitting alone in the reading nook beneath the front window while late sunlight filled the room. The house looked beautiful. Not quite finished yet, but close enough that you could finally see it clearly.

The kitchen. The shelves. The living room. The porch. Everything was becoming exactly what you’d imagined.

You should have loved it. Instead, tears filled your eyes. Not because of Mark. Not even because of the divorce. Because every corner of the house contained a future that no longer existed.

A nursery that had never happened. Family dinners that would never happen. Christmas mornings that would never happen. The dream itself had become a ghost.

By the following week, you’d called a realtor. And when she asked whether you were sure, your answer came surprisingly easily.

“No.” You looked around the nearly finished house one last time. “But I think I need to be.”

The decision felt like another loss. The final one. Even though Mark wasn’t taking the house from you… You were the one letting it go. And somehow that hurt even more.

**********

The conversation started with cabinet hardware. Or maybe paint. Later, neither of you would remember. Only that Joel had come looking for you with a notebook in one hand and a question about some final detail that still needed your approval before the crew could finish that section of the house.

The project was close enough to completion now that most of the decisions were small ones. Trim. Fixtures. Finishing touches. The kind of details you’d once spent hours debating. Now you barely glanced at the samples.

“This one’s fine.”

Joel frowned. “You didn’t even look.”

You shrugged. “They both work.”

The answer clearly bothered him. Not because of the hardware. Because six months ago, you would’ve had opinions. Strong ones.

Joel set the samples down on the kitchen island. “The other one’s more durable.”

“Then do that one.”

His eyes narrowed. You busied yourself with the paperwork spread across the counter. Mostly because you knew exactly what expression he was making. The one that meant he was trying to figure out what was wrong. The one you’d become increasingly good at avoiding.

Then Joel nodded toward the stack of papers. “What’s all that?”

You glanced down. “Oh.” The answer came out far more casually than it felt. “Listing paperwork.”

Joel stared. “Listing?”

“The house.”

You continued signing your name. One signature. Then another. When no response came, you finally looked up.

Joel hadn’t moved. “The house?” he repeated.

You nodded. “I’m selling it.”

The words sounded strangely normal now. You’d said them enough times to realtors and lawyers that they’d begun losing their power. 

Apparently Joel hadn’t reached that stage yet. “What do you mean you’re selling it?”

“I mean exactly what I said.”

His expression remained fixed. “Why?”

You looked away first. Toward the living room. Toward the shelves. Toward the nearly finished house.

Then you shrugged. “It’s time.”

Joel actually laughed. Not because he found it funny. Because he clearly thought that answer was ridiculous. “Time for what?”

You folded the paperwork closed. The knot in your stomach had returned. “It just is.”

“No.” His answer came immediately. Firm. “You don’t spend almost a year building your dream house and then decide it’s time.”

The words landed harder than they should have,  because he was right. You had spent almost a year building it. Every room. Every detail. Every decision.

Joel stepped closer, but not enough to crowd you. Enough that you couldn’t pretend he wasn’t standing there.

“You love this place.” The statement wasn’t a question.

You swallowed. “It’s a house.”

“Bullshit.”

Your eyes widened. Joel almost never swore around you. Apparently today was an exception.

“You love this place.” His gaze moved around the room. “The reading nook.” A finger pointed toward the front window. “The kitchen.” Then the island. “The shelves.” Then the living room. “I’ve listened to you talk about every square inch of this house for months.”

The frustration in his voice wasn’t really about the house. You both knew that.

“So tell me what’s actually going on.”

Silence stretched between you. Long enough that you considered lying. Long enough that you almost succeeded.

Then your eyes drifted toward the hallway. Toward the room that was supposed to have become a nursery one day. And suddenly you were too tired. Too tired to keep pretending. Your laugh sounded small, broken around the edges.

“It’s time to get real.” The words came out quietly. “So I’m going to sell it.”

Joel remained motionless. 

“It’s a beautiful house.” Your eyes wandered through the room. “The problem is that it was built for a life that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Something in Joel’s expression shifted.

You kept going anyway, because now that you’d started, stopping felt impossible. “I designed family dinners into this kitchen.” Your voice had softened. “I designed Christmas mornings into that living room.” You pointed vaguely toward the front of the house. “There was supposed to be a nursery.”

The admission hurt. Even now.

“There was supposed to be…” Your throat tightened. You looked away. “There was supposed to be a family.”

The room fell silent. When you spoke again, your voice sounded steadier. Not because you felt so… Because you’d repeated these thoughts enough times to yourself that they had become familiar.

“It’s time to stop pretending.” Joel didn’t interrupt you, and you appreciated it. “I need a place that fits the life I’m actually living.” The smile you managed felt tired, painfully so. “Not one that’s ready for the life I’m clearly not having.”

Joel’s gaze drifted slowly around the room; the shelves, the kitchen, the nearly finished house… Then it returned to you. And just… stared.

Not because he was judging you. Because he genuinely seemed unable to process what you’d just said.

You looked away first, and the silence stretched. Eventually, Joel rubbed a hand across his jaw. His expression hadn’t changed; if anything, he looked more stunned than before.

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

The honesty caught you off guard, and a small laugh escaped you.

“That’s okay.”

“No.” His gaze dropped briefly toward the paperwork. Then lifted again. “It’s not.” Joel shook his head slightly. “I’ve spent almost a year listening to you talk about this place.” His voice remained quiet. “You had plans for every room.” A muscle moved in his jaw. “You knew exactly where the Christmas tree was gonna go.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly… Because you had.

Joel exhaled slowly. Then looked away. The kitchen fell silent again. When he spoke next, it sounded almost like he was talking to himself.

“I thought you’d be here forever.”

You stared at him. Joel seemed to realize what he’d said a second later. His eyes dropped immediately, as though he’d accidentally spoken a truth he hadn’t meant to say out loud.

Finally, he picked up the cabinet samples he’d originally come to ask about. For several seconds, he seemed to completely forget why he was holding them.

Eventually he cleared his throat. “So…” The word sounded rough. “Which one?”

You blinked. “What?”

“The hardware.” A faint shake of his head followed. “The reason I came in here.”

You looked down at the samples. At the two options you’d barely cared about ten minutes ago. Then pointed at one. “That one.”

Joel nodded. “Okay.”

He gathered the paperwork together and turned toward the doorway. For a second, it looked like he wanted to say something else. Something important… but instead he stopped himself.

“Okay.” Then he left.

You watched him disappear down the hallway. A few moments later, you heard him speaking to one of the crew members outside.

He sounded completely normal. Like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just looked at your dream house as though he’d lost something too. You stared at the listing paperwork for a long time after that.

*********

The house went on the market three weeks later. You hated it almost immediately. Not the paperwork or the realtor. Not even the little sign that appeared beside the driveway one Tuesday morning. It was the showings.

At first, you told yourself you’d be fine. The house was just a house. People would walk through it, ask questions, make comments, and leave. It wasn’t personal.

The illusion lasted exactly one afternoon. The first couple arrived carrying coffee cups and holding hands. They spent almost twenty minutes wandering through the kitchen while the realtor explained the renovations, and you stayed mostly out of the way, pretending to answer emails at the dining table. Then the woman stopped beside the island, rested her hand against the countertop, and smiled.

“Oh, this is perfect.”

Her husband glanced up from the cabinet she’d been inspecting. “For what?”

She looked around the room. “Family dinners.”

The words hit you so hard it felt ridiculous. Of course, that had been the point. You’d spent an absurd amount of time arguing over the dimensions of the island because you’d wanted enough room for holidays, enough room for children helping with baking, enough room for people gathering around it without feeling cramped. You’d imagined birthdays, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas mornings that started with coffee and cinnamon rolls. You left the room before they finished talking.

The second showing was even worse. A couple in their thirties arrived with a little girl who couldn’t have been older than four. 

While her parents discussed square footage and storage space, the child discovered the reading nook beneath the front window. Within minutes she’d climbed into it, curled her legs underneath herself, and proudly announced that it was hers now. The declaration made her parents laugh; the realtor laughed too. You managed a smile before excusing yourself and retreating upstairs.

The third showing finally broke you. The couple themselves weren’t particularly memorable. Neither was most of their conversation. You’d heard enough prospective buyers discuss countertops and flooring by then that the details blurred together.

But then the woman stopped outside the extra bedroom. The room. You knew before she spoke. You knew exactly what was coming.

Her face lit up. “Oh, this would make a beautiful nursery.”

The sentence was completely innocent, but you made it approximately five more seconds before escaping into the backyard.

After that, you stopped attending showings altogether. Whenever the realtor called, you found somewhere else to be. Sometimes it was a coffee shop. Sometimes a bookstore. Sometimes Target, where you’d wander aimlessly through aisles without buying anything. A few afternoons, you simply drove around until the showing was over because you couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Anywhere was easier than being there.

The problem wasn’t that people loved the house. The problem was that they loved it for exactly the reasons you’d built it. Every family saw the same things you had seen. The kitchen. The reading nook. The backyard. The extra bedroom. The future. Your future. Or at least the one you’d spent years imagining.

One afternoon, the realtor called sounding delighted. “We’ve had a lot of interest.”

You closed your eyes. Of course she sounded delighted, that was her job. “That’s great.”

And it was. Objectively, everything was going exactly as it should. The house photographed beautifully. The market was strong. Several families had already expressed serious interest. It was the sort of listing realtors hoped for. So why did it feel like grief?

The answer arrived a few days later. You returned home just as the realtor was leaving after a showing. Before climbing into her car, she handed you a feedback sheet from one of the prospective buyers.

You glanced at it casually and then stopped at one of the comments: We absolutely love the home. It feels like the perfect place to raise our children.

For a long moment, you simply stood in the driveway staring at the sentence. Reading it once, then again, and then a third time. By the time you reached the front door, tears were already burning behind your eyes… Because they were right. That was exactly what the house was.

The perfect place to raise children. The perfect place to build a family. The perfect place to grow old. And somewhere along the way, you’d become convinced that because your marriage had failed, the house had failed you too.

The thought followed you inside. Through the kitchen. Past the shelves. Into the living room, where the evening sunlight spilled through the windows exactly the way you’d always hoped it would.

And for a second, since putting it on the market, you found yourself wondering whether selling it would actually heal anything at all.

**********

Joel found you upstairs. The realtor’s lockbox was still hanging from the front door. Your car was in the driveway. Between the two, it hadn’t taken much detective work to figure out what kind of day you’d had.

The room was quiet when he stepped inside. You stood beside the window with your arms folded tightly across your chest, staring out at the backyard. The room itself was almost finished now. Fresh paint covered the walls. The trim had been installed. Sunlight poured through the glass exactly the way you’d once hoped it would.

Neither of you called it the nursery, you hadn’t for months, but that didn’t change what it was.

“Hey.”

You let out a tired laugh without turning around. “Hey.”

Joel’s gaze drifted around the room before settling on you again. He’d seen enough by now to recognize the signs. The lockbox. The showing. The expression on your face.

“Tough showing?”

You smiled faintly. “They loved it.”

Something in the answer made his chest tighten, because he understood exactly what you meant.

Your eyes remained fixed on the window. “They said it’d be perfect for children.”

Joel lowered his gaze briefly. “Yeah.”

You laughed again. A small, broken sound. “The worst part is they were right.” Silence settled between you, but eventually you shook your head. “I don’t even know why I’m upset anymore.”

Joel looked at you. The statement wasn’t true, you knew it and so did he. “I think you do.”

You closed your eyes briefly. Maybe you did, Maybe you were simply tired of saying it out loud.

“You know, when Sarah was born, I thought I had everything figured out.”

That got your attention. You looked over your shoulder.

Joel’s gaze remained somewhere distant, fixed on a memory instead of the room.

“I was twenty.” A faint smile appeared. “Told myself I knew exactly how my life was gonna go.” The smile lingered for a second before fading. “Turns out I didn’t know a damn thing.”

You watched him quietly.

Joel let out a breath.

“Sarah’s finishin’ high school next year.”

Your eyes widened slightly. Even after all this time, it always surprised you how quickly the years seemed to move when he talked about her.

Joel shook his head.

“Feels like yesterday she was ridin’ around the driveway with training wheels.” The affection in his voice softened something inside you. Then he looked back at the room. “And none of it happened the way I planned.”

The words settled between you; steady, simple and true.

“Most things don’t.”

You swallowed… Because this conversation wasn’t really about Sarah anymore.

“What happened to you is awful.” The bluntness caught you off guard. Joel never had much patience for pretending otherwise. “What Mark did.” His expression hardened briefly. “Awful.”

You looked away.

Joel let the silence sit. Then he continued.

“But you’re still here.” 

A humorless laugh escaped you. “Barely.”

“No.” The answer came immediately, certain. “You’re here.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

Joel gestured around the room.

“The house is still here too.”

A small smile tugged at your mouth despite yourself.

“That’s not helping your argument.”

“Wasn’t tryin’ to.”

His mouth twitched briefly. Then he grew serious again. For a few moments, he seemed to be searching for the right words. Not something he did often.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter.

“I think it’s gonna take a hell of a lot of courage.” You frowned slightly. Joel’s gaze remained steady. “I think it’s gonna hurt.”

The honesty surprised you. There was no false optimism in it, no promises that everything would magically work out, just truth.

“But I think you’ll put yourself back together.”

The room felt very still. You stared at him.

Joel shrugged slightly, as though the conclusion were obvious. As though he’d never considered any other outcome.

“You built this whole damn place.” His gaze moved around the room. “The plans. The decisions. Every little thing.” A small smile appeared. “You survived Tommy’s opinions.”

You snorted.

“That alone deserves some kind of award.”

“There you go.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Now you’re thinkin’.”

Despite everything, you laughed. A real laugh this time.

The sound seemed to surprise both of you. Joel smiled too, and for a brief moment, something passed between you. Something warm. Something that had been sitting quietly beneath the surface for months.

Joel felt it. You knew he did. Because his expression softened in a way that made your pulse stumble.

“You got more future left than you think.” The words were quiet. Careful. Not a speech. Not advice. Just something he believed.

And somehow, standing there in the room that had once represented everything you’d lost, you found yourself wondering whether he might be right.

*************

The house was done. After nearly a year of noise, dust, deliveries, delays, and an endless stream of decisions, there was suddenly nothing left to decide. The shelves were installed. The paint was dry. Every fixture had found its place. The last item on the punch list had been crossed off that morning.

You’d expected to feel relieved, but instead, the house felt strangely empty. Part of that was probably because the crew was gone. For months there had always been somebody here. Tommy arguing with someone. Music playing from a work radio. Joel appearing in a doorway with another question about some detail you’d forgotten you needed to approve. Now there was only silence.

You’d missed Joel that morning. The realization bothered you more than you cared to admit. It wasn’t as though he’d disappeared. The renovation was over so there was no reason for him to keep showing up every day.

Still, you’d assumed there would be a goodbye, a conversation… Something. Instead, you’d spent twenty minutes talking to a supplier on the phone and emerged to find half the trucks already gone, including his.

The feeling followed you around for the rest of the afternoon. By the time you wandered into the kitchen, you were mostly trying to avoid looking at the boxes beginning to appear throughout the house. Some had already been packed. Others sat half-finished. Every one of them felt like evidence that you were actually going through with this.

That’s when you noticed the note. It sat on the island by itself, folded once. Your name written across the front in familiar handwriting.

Frowning, you picked it up.

Found this hidden behind one of the old built-ins in the hallway. Figured it might belong to your grandmother.

Didn’t want Tommy anywhere near it in case he decided it was treasure.

— Joel

Your eyes immediately moved to the object sitting beside the note.

It was a small wooden box, old and worn, but beautiful. You weren’t sure how you’d missed it before.

Setting the note down, you crossed the room and lifted the box carefully onto the kitchen table. The hinges creaked slightly when you opened it.

Inside was a lifetime. 

Photographs filled the top layer, some were loose, others were tucked into envelopes that had yellowed with age. Beneath them sat old letters tied together with ribbon, recipe cards covered in familiar handwriting, a porcelain brooch you vaguely remembered seeing your grandmother wear when you were small, and dozens of little keepsakes whose stories had likely disappeared long ago.

You smiled despite yourself as the house suddenly felt a little less empty.

For the next half hour, you sat at the kitchen table sorting through fragments of a life that had existed long before you were born; wedding photographs, Christmas gatherings, birthdays... Ordinary moments preserved in faded black-and-white snapshots. Your grandmother looked impossibly young in some of them, almost like a stranger.

Eventually, after removing another stack of photographs, you noticed something resting at the very bottom of the box. A book.

The leather cover was worn smooth with age. There was no title. Only your grandmother’s name written neatly inside the front cover.

You stared at it for several seconds before opening the first page, and immediately realized it wasn’t just a notebook, it was a diary. You took it and sat on your carefully picked couch and started to read.

The diary wasn’t particularly organized. Some entries were only a few lines long while others stretched across several pages. Most of them were surprisingly ordinary. There were notes about family dinners, complaints about neighbors, recipes she didn’t want to forget, and stories about your mother and uncles when they were young.

The woman emerging from those pages felt more real than the grandmother you remembered, less polished and more human.

You smiled more than once. You cried once or twice. Then, sometime after lunch, you turned a page and found yourself staring at a date from several months after your grandfather’s death.

The shift in tone was immediate, even the handwriting looked heavier somehow, as though even holding the pen had required effort. You started reading.

September 14

I spent the afternoon looking at apartments. Margaret insisted I should at least consider it, a smaller place. Less maintenance and less rattling around in rooms I don’t use anymore.

Everyone seems to think it would be easier and maybe they’re right. This house feels too large now. Every room contains some version of him.

I can’t walk into the kitchen without remembering him sitting at the table pretending to read the newspaper while actually watching the children argue. I can’t pass the back door without expecting to see his boots. I still wake up some mornings and reach across the bed before remembering.

Today I made enough soup for four people. I stood there staring at the pot wondering what on earth I was thinking. Then I cried over carrots like an idiot.

September 29

The children are worried about me. I understand why… The truth is that I’m worried about myself too.

Everything feels temporary. As though this isn’t my life anymore. As though I’m simply waiting for real life to come back.

October 3

I spent nearly an hour standing in the hallway today. The one outside our bedroom.

I couldn’t remember why at first. Then I realised I was listening. Waiting for the garage door. Waiting for his keys. Waiting for the sound of him coming home.

The strange thing is that for a few seconds it felt completely normal. Then I remembered. It is astonishing how many times grief can break your heart with the same fact.

October 17

I think I finally understand why I keep looking at apartments. It’s because every time I walk through these rooms, I am forced to remember that the future I expected is gone.

The future was supposed to be the two of us growing old here, sitting on the porch, complaining about the neighbours. Spoiling our grandchildren. Arguing about things that don’t matter.

I had become so accustomed to that picture that I forgot life never promised it to me.

October 19

I walked through the house again today. I kept thinking about all the reasons I should leave.

Then, somewhere between the dining room and the front door, a ridiculous thought occurred to me.

This house has already survived more than I have. It survived being full of children. It survived being full of noise. It survived the years when money was tight. It survived celebrations and funerals and Christmases and ordinary Tuesdays.

Why am I acting as though it only knows how to be one thing?

November 2

I realised something today.

The house is not asking me to leave. The house is not the thing hurting me. The house is simply standing where it has always stood.

I am the one trying to run.

November 6

Perhaps the real problem is that staying means accepting that there is still a future.

Not the one I planned, not the one I wanted… But a future nonetheless, and that feels terrifying.

Because if there is still a future, then I have to live it. I have to keep going. I have to become somebody I never expected to be.

A widow. A woman living alone. Someone building a life she did not choose.

November 12

I think courage may simply be staying. Not because staying is easy, but because leaving would be.

Because every day I remain here, I am forced to accept that my life did not end when that chapter ended… And some days, that feels like the bravest thing I have ever done.

You sat there for a long time after finishing the entries.

The diary remained open in your lap while the last traces of daylight slowly disappeared from the living room, leaving it bathed in the warm glow of the lamps you’d installed only a few weeks earlier. At some point, you became aware that you’d been staring at the same paragraph for several minutes without reading it again. The words were no longer on the page. They were somewhere inside your chest.

The similarities weren’t exact. Your grandmother had lost a husband she loved deeply. You had lost a marriage that, if you were being completely honest with yourself, had been dying long before Mark finally walked out the door. And yet… the feeling underneath was so familiar it made your throat tighten.

The exhaustion, the grief. The overwhelming urge to escape. Not because the house had done anything wrong, but because staying meant facing what had changed.

For months, you’d been telling yourself that selling was the sensible choice. The practical choice. The mature choice. Every explanation you’d given your lawyer, your realtor, your friends, and yourself had sounded perfectly reasonable.

Sitting alone in the finished living room with your grandmother’s diary resting open across your knees, you finally admitted something you should have realized a long time ago: You didn’t want to sell because the house was too large for your non-existent family, you wanted to sell because it hurt.

Because every room reminded you of plans that had never become reality. Because every corner contained some version of the future you’d imagined, and living beside those ghosts felt infinitely harder than walking away from them.

Slowly, your gaze drifted around the room. For months, you’d looked at everything and seen only absence. You’d seen the children who weren’t there, the husband who’d left, and the future that had collapsed before it ever had the chance to exist.

Tonight, for the first time, you saw something else. The kitchen wasn’t evidence of a failed marriage. The shelves weren’t evidence of a failed marriage. The reading nook wasn’t evidence of a failed marriage. None of it was.

The realization settled quietly over you, not like a revelation and not like some dramatic moment of clarity, but like a truth that had been patiently waiting for you to catch up to it.

Your grandmother was right. The house wasn’t the thing hurting you. The house was simply standing where it had always stood, waiting.

You thought about all the things you’d poured into it over the past year. The hours spent sketching layouts. The endless conversations about paint colors. The arguments over cabinet handles. The reading nook beneath the front window. The garden you’d already begun planning in your head.

None of those things belonged to Mark, they belonged to you. The thought should have made you sad, but instead, it brought an unexpected sense of peace.

For the first time since the divorce, you found yourself imagining a future inside these walls that didn’t begin and end with what you’d lost. The picture wasn’t clear yet, there were still enormous blank spaces where certainty should have been… But there was a future. That was the important part.

A future didn’t have to look the way you’d imagined at thirty in order to be worth living.

The realization made you smile despite yourself; simply because, for the first time in months, the future felt like something other than an empty room.

You looked down at the diary again, your fingers resting lightly against the worn leather cover before you finally closed it and set it aside. Then you reached for your phone.

The realtor answered on the second ring.

“Hi,” she said brightly. “Everything okay?”

Your eyes wandered around while she spoke. The house looked exactly the same as it had an hour earlier, and yet somehow everything about it felt different.

Home. The word appeared in your mind so naturally that it surprised you. When you finally spoke, the decision felt far simpler than the weeks you’d spent agonizing over it.

“Actually, I need to take the house off the market.”

There was a brief pause.

“Are you sure?”

A few weeks ago, you would’ve hesitated. You would’ve made a list of pros and cons. You would’ve questioned yourself. You would’ve asked for another day to think about it. This time, the answer arrived immediately.

“Yeah.” The smile that spread across your face felt small but completely genuine. “I’m sure.”

After ending the call, you remained at the couch for several minutes, listening to the quiet that settled around the house.

Sitting there in the home you’d nearly abandoned, you realized that staying wasn’t the easy choice. It was the brave one.

************

A few days passed. The realtor removed the listing and the sign disappeared from the front yard. Life didn’t magically transform overnight, but little by little, the house began feeling different.

You’d stopped packing. Then, almost without noticing, you started unpacking. At first it was practical things; dishes, towels, books... The kind of objects that made daily life function. Later came the things that felt more permanent, the things that quietly admitted you weren’t leaving after all.

One afternoon, you took down three framed photographs from the hallway. You stood there holding them for a long time; almost a decade of memories. Vacations, anniversaries… Smiles that looked genuine enough in pictures.

In the end, you wrapped them and placed them in a box.

The empty spaces on the wall bothered you immediately, so that weekend you drove to a flea market; then another, and another after that.

You came home with an old landscape painting, a vintage mirror that probably needed more restoration than you wanted to admit, and a collection of small framed sketches that made absolutely no sense together and yet somehow worked perfectly in the hallway.

The house slowly began changing. A different lamp, a chair moved from one room to another, new books on the shelves, old photographs replaced by things that simply made you happy. For the first time since the divorce, it felt less like preserving a life that had ended and more like creating one.

The realization caught you by surprise one evening while you were standing on a ladder in the living room, trying to decide whether a painting looked better two inches to the left or two inches to the right.

Your first thought was absurdly specific: Joel would have an opinion about this.

You froze; the hammer remained in your hand, the painting hung crookedly on the wall. And suddenly you realized you hadn’t thought about him properly in days.

Not because you’d forgotten him… Quite the opposite. The house had occupied all the space in your mind. The diary. The decision to stay. The process of making the place yours again. 

Somewhere along the way, you’d stopped thinking about what you’d lost. Which left room to think about something else. Someone else.

You climbed down from the ladder slowly. The living room felt unusually quiet, because now that you allowed yourself to think about Joel, really think about him, there was an uncomfortable truth waiting for you.

You missed him. Not the idea of him. Not the almost-kiss. Him.

His terrible jokes. His opinions about things nobody had asked him to have opinions on. The way he somehow always appeared when something went wrong. The way the house had felt fuller when his truck was parked outside.

You sat down on the sofa and stared at the half-finished gallery wall. Then, despite yourself, you smiled. Because the thought of the future didn’t make you think about what was missing. It made you think about who you wished was in it.

************

A few weeks later, Joel still found himself looking for your driveway whenever he happened to be working nearby. It was a stupid habit, and an embarrassing one.

The job was finished, the invoices had been paid, the crew had moved on to other projects. There was absolutely no reason for him to wonder whether your truck was parked outside or whether you’d finally moved out and sold the house.

And yet, every now and then, he’d catch himself thinking about it. Thinking about you.

The realization irritated him more than it probably should have. Not because he regretted how he felt… but because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

The day he’d left your house without saying goodbye hadn’t been one of his finer moments. He knew that. Tommy certainly knew that.

In fact, Tommy had spent the better part of two weeks informing him exactly how stupid he’d been.

“You just left?”

Joel had continued loading tools into the truck and just grumbled as a response.

“You didn’t say goodbye?”

“No.”

Tommy had stared at him. Then shaken his head like a disappointed parent.

“You are genuinely unbelievable.”

The problem wasn’t that Joel hadn’t wanted to say goodbye, the problem was that he hadn’t trusted himself to do it.

The house was finished. You were selling it. He’d been standing in a doorway watching you walk away from something you loved, and every instinct he’d possessed had been telling him to stay out of it.

So he’d done the only thing that felt safe. He’d left.

The decision hadn’t gotten any smarter with time. By the end of the month, he was mostly trying not to think about it anymore. Which was exactly what he was doing when he locked the door to the workshop one evening and turned toward the parking lot.

The crew had already gone home; the last of the trucks were pulling out, Tommy was arguing with somebody about inventory. A perfectly ordinary day.

Then Joel saw a familiar car parked near the fence. His steps slowed immediately.

For a second, he genuinely thought he was imagining things. The sun hung low over the yard, throwing long shadows across the gravel. A few workers were still loading equipment, but beyond them, leaning casually against the side of your car, was you.

Joel stopped walking. His brain seemed to forget how the next part worked.

You were here. At the yard. Waiting. The realization hit him with surprising force.

Because in every version of this conversation he’d imagined over the past few weeks (and there had been far more of those than he’d ever admit aloud) he was the one who found you, not the other way around.

Across the lot, your eyes met his. And then you smiled. A real one. Not one of the tired smiles he’d seen so often near the end of the renovation.

Something warm settled unexpectedly in his chest. For the first time in months, you looked happy.

The thought distracted him long enough that he didn’t notice Tommy stepping up beside him.

His brother followed his gaze, saw you, and then immediately looked back at Joel.

“Oh.”

Joel closed his eyes.

“Tommy.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

Tommy grinned.

“I absolutely was.”

Joel pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked up again, Tommy was already backing away.

“Inventory emergency.”

“You literally just-”

“Very urgent.”

“Tommy.”

“Good luck.”

And then the bastard was gone.

Joel watched him disappear before turning back toward the parking lot. Toward you. Toward the woman he’d spent the last several weeks trying very hard not to miss.

He didn’t stop until he was standing in front of you. Up close, he could see things he hadn’t noticed from across the parking lot.

The way your hair had been pulled back in a hurry. The faint smudge of dust on your jeans. The fact that you looked lighter somehow. Not happier, exactly, but lighter. Like you’d finally set something down.

Joel had imagined seeing you again often enough over the past few weeks that you’d think he’d have something intelligent prepared.

Instead, the only thing that came out was: “Hey.”

Your smile widened slightly.

“Hey.”

God, he’d missed that smile. The realization arrived so quickly and so completely that it almost knocked the breath out of him.

He’d missed your laugh. Your opinions. The way you could spend twenty minutes discussing something nobody else would notice and somehow make it sound fascinating. He’d missed walking into a room and immediately looking for you. 

Mostly, though, he’d missed being looked at the way you were looking at him now. Like you were happy he was here. Like you’d come here hoping to see him. The thought made his pulse kick.

“What are you doing here?”

You glanced down briefly before looking back up.

“I came to see you.”

Joel forgot how to breathe just for a second. A very long second.

Something in your expression softened when you realized the effect those words had had.

“Well.” A nervous laugh escaped you. “Actually, I came to see Tommy too.”

Joel narrowed his eyes.

You immediately laughed. “Okay, that’s a lie.”

“Thought so.”

The smile that appeared on his face felt entirely beyond his control.

You looked at it. Actually looked at it. And suddenly Joel became painfully aware of the fact that the two of you were standing in the middle of a mostly empty construction yard while the evening sun turned everything gold.

“So.” His hands settled on his hips. “Everything okay?”

The question was simple. The answer wasn’t.

For a second, you simply looked at him. Then you nodded.

“Yeah.” Your voice sounded different. “Actually…” A small laugh escaped you. “Better than okay.”

Joel’s brow furrowed.

You took a breath. And then said the last thing he’d expected to hear.

“I’m keeping the house.”

Joel stared at you.

You smiled. The kind of smile that started somewhere deep and worked its way outward.

“I’m staying.”

For a moment, he couldn’t find words.

“What changed?”

Your gaze softened.

“I found something.”

Joel immediately thought of a man. The possibility lasted less than half a second before he realized how ridiculous that was.

Whatever expression crossed his face made you laugh. A real laugh. One he hadn’t heard in months.

“My grandmother’s diary.”

Relief flooded through him so quickly it was almost embarrassing.

You told him about the box. The note. The diary. The entry you’d spent all day reading and rereading.

Joel listened without interrupting. And when you finally finished, the yard fell quiet again.

The evening had grown softer around you two. Most of the crew had left. The sounds of traffic drifted faintly from somewhere beyond the fence.

You looked at him.

“I think I was trying to run.”

Joel nodded slowly.

“Yeah.”

The answer surprised you.

“Yeah?”

A small smile touched his mouth.

“Little bit.”

You laughed. Then shook your head.

“I hate when you’re right.”

“Happens a lot.”

“According to who?”

“Me.”

That earned another laugh. God, he’d missed that sound.

For a few moments, neither of you spoke. The silence wasn’t awkward. It felt comfortable. The kind that only existed between two people who already knew each other.

Then you glanced toward the workshop behind him.

“There’s one more thing.”

Joel’s stomach immediately tightened. The way you said it. The way your fingers twisted together. The way your gaze lingered on his before darting away again.

He recognized nerves. Because he was suddenly feeling them too.

“What?”

You looked down. Then back up.

“I realized something else while I was unpacking.”

Joel waited.

You swallowed. And for the first time since he’d walked over, you looked uncertain.

“I missed you.”

The words were quiet. Simple. Completely devastating.

Joel stared at you. The entire yard seemed to disappear. The trucks. The tools. The building behind him…  All of it. Gone. Leaving only you.

You laughed nervously.

“I had this whole speech planned.”

His heart was hammering now.

“Yeah?”

“It was better than this.”

“Doubt it.”

Your eyes met his. The look that passed between you felt familiar. Because it was.

It was the same look from the living room. The same look from the nursery. The same look that had been chasing both of you for months. Only this time neither of you had anything left to hide behind.

Joel took a step closer. Not much. Just enough that your breath caught. His did too.

“I missed you too.”

The confession came easily. Far more easily than he’d expected.

“You know,” he said quietly, “I spent three weeks convincing myself not to drive past your house.”

Your eyebrows lifted.

“Three weeks?”

“Wasn’t very successful.”

The laugh that escaped you was beautiful.

And before Joel could stop himself, he reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair behind your ear. The gesture was gentle. The moment his fingers touched your skin, the air between you seemed to shift. 

Joel felt something inside him finally settle. Months of wanting. Months of waiting. Months of bad timing. And suddenly there you were. Standing right in front of him.

His hand lingered briefly against your cheek.

“Hey.”

Your voice came out softer now.

“Yeah?”

The smile that appeared on your face was small. Tender and a little nervous.

“You never said goodbye.”

Joel laughed quietly.

“No.”

“You should probably fix that.”

His eyes dropped briefly to your mouth. Then returned to yours.

“Yeah.” The word came out rough. “I probably should.”

And when he leaned in this time, there was nothing rushing either of you.

The first kiss was soft. Almost impossibly soft. The kind of kiss that carried months of restraint inside it.

Joel felt the small breath you released against his mouth before he kissed you again, and this time neither of you seemed quite as careful.

One of your hands slid up to rest against his chest. The other found his shoulder. The simple contact nearly undid him. Because he’d spent so long wanting to touch you.

Not like this. Not only like this. Just… touch you. To know you were real. To know this wasn’t another conversation replaying itself in his head on the drive home.

The next kiss lingered longer. Warmer. Your fingers brushed the back of his neck, and Joel couldn’t stop the quiet sound that escaped him when you moved closer.

The distance disappeared entirely. The feeling of your body against his made every sensible thought he’d ever had evaporate.

Joel’s hand slipped from your cheek into your hair. The kiss deepened naturally, neither of you hurrying, neither of you trying to prove anything.

There was no desperation in it. Only relief. Relief at no longer pretending. Relief at no longer walking around everything that had existed between you from the very beginning.

When you finally broke apart, neither of you had gone far. Your foreheads remained touching. Your breaths mingled.

A smile was still pulling at your mouth. Joel’s wasn’t doing much better.

“Hi,” you murmured.

The laugh that escaped him was helpless.

“Hi.”

You kissed him again before he could say anything else. Short and sweet.

Joel closed his eyes briefly.

“You know,” he said, his voice rougher than usual, “I had a whole speech prepared.”

Your eyebrows lifted.

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to it?”

His gaze lingered on you. The evening light caught in your hair, and the sight of you standing there smiling at him made the answer embarrassingly obvious.

He shook his head.

“Forgot every damn word.”

Your laugh wrapped itself around him like sunlight.

And standing there in the middle of a dusty construction yard, with the day fading around them and the future stretching wide open ahead, Joel couldn’t remember ever being happier to lose his train of thought.

*************

The bedroom was filled with the breathless sounds escaping your lips as Joel moved with relentless determination, drawing you closer to the edge with every thrust.

A moment earlier, he’d adjusted the position of your leg, and the subtle change had somehow brought him impossibly deeper. The resulting groan tore from his throat before he could stop it, low and desperate, while his forehead pressed briefly against yours. His breathing mingled with yours, uneven and heated, and the way his hands tightened around you made it clear he was losing the battle to stay composed.

Nearly two years together, and somehow nothing had dulled the effect you had on him. If anything, it had become worse. More familiar. More intimate. More addictive. Every glance, every touch, every sound still had the power to unravel him in ways he would have thought impossible before you came into his life.

“There you go, baby. That’s it. Come for me.”

The rasp in his voice sent a shiver through you, drawing a helpless moan from your lips as you wrapped your arms around him and pulled him even closer. It wasn’t enough. It never felt like enough. You wanted every part of him within reach, wanted to erase the space between your bodies entirely, as though holding him tighter could somehow bring you closer still.

The sound he made in response was low and unsteady, and for a moment neither of you seemed capable of anything except clinging to each other and letting the rest of the world disappear.

When pleasure finally crashed over you, it stole the breath from your lungs and sent your back arching into the mattress. Your cry echoed through the room as you clung to him, overwhelmed by the force of it.

Joel followed you moments later. A low groan escaped him as he buried his face against your shoulder, holding you tightly while he spilled himself inside of you. For several seconds, neither of you seemed capable of anything except holding on, caught in the aftermath and in each other.

The morning sun continued creeping across the bedroom floor while you lay curled against Joel’s side, one of his arms beneath your head and the other resting lazily across your waist. His breathing had started to slow, the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek familiar enough now to feel like home.

The room was quiet. Comfortable. The sort of silence that only existed between people who no longer felt the need to fill every moment with words.

Your fingers traced idle patterns across his stomach. Then, before you could stop yourself, the question slipped out.

“Do you think we did it this time?”

Joel’s hand paused. The question wasn’t unusual anymore. Not since the two of you had finally decided to stop talking about someday and start talking about maybe.

His thumb brushed slowly against your side.

“Maybe.”

You smiled.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer I’ve got.”

The smile in his voice was impossible to miss.

You lifted your head slightly.

“Coward.”

Joel looked down at you.

“Sweetheart, I spent twenty years raising a teenage girl by myself.” His eyebrows lifted. “There ain’t much on this planet I’m scared of.”

The laugh that escaped you earned a grin from him.

For a moment, you simply looked at each other. The conversation felt different now than it would have years ago. Back then, the subject had carried so much weight. Now there was hope. Hope and uncertainty. But somehow the uncertainty didn’t feel frightening anymore. Not with him.

Joel brushed a strand of hair away from your face.

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

His expression softened.

“I think if it happens, it’ll happen.”

You narrowed your eyes.

“That’s a terrible cliché.”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t even mean anything.”

“I know.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “But I mean it.”

You pressed a kiss against his shoulder. Then reality finally returned.

“How long until she gets here?”

You reached for your phone on the nightstand. Your eyes widened.

“Oh no.”

Joel immediately sat up slightly.

“What?”

“An hour.”

“An hour?”

“An hour.”

The silence that followed was almost comical.

Then Joel dropped back onto the pillows.

“She’s bringing him.”

You buried your face against his shoulder.

“She’s bringing him.”

The boyfriend. The mysterious boyfriend. The boyfriend neither of you had met. The boyfriend who apparently existed but somehow remained suspiciously absent from every photograph Sarah had sent.

Joel looked toward the ceiling.

“What if he’s terrible?”

You started laughing immediately.

“What if he’s great?”

“What if he’s terrible and I gotta pretend he’s great?”

“Joel.”

“What?”

“You are not allowed to interrogate him.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You stared. Joel stared back. The silence stretched.

“You were absolutely planning to.”

His expression remained completely innocent.

“I just have questions.”

“You have an entire questionnaire.”

“Maybe.”

You laughed so hard you nearly fell off the bed. Joel caught you automatically, pulling you back against him. The movement was easy. Natural.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The sunlight. The bedroom. The house. The future… Everything felt wonderfully ordinary. And after everything it had taken to get here, ordinary might have been the most beautiful thing of all.

Then Joel sighed dramatically.

“We should get dressed.”

“We should.”

Neither of you moved. Not even a little.

Thirty seconds passed. Then a minute. Finally Joel looked down at you.

“You know Sarah’s definitely got a key.”

JOEL

Joel, get up.

The last thing Joel remembered was the whistle of something slicing through the air and the crack that followed it, and then, just final blank. He feels like his bone meeting metal and the sound of something ending.

He's die.

He remembered Ellie’s voice tearing itself open above him.

get up, joel---

Get up.

Joel, get the fuck up.

fucking get up.

He remembered wanting to answer her. Trying to get up just for her, and only her. Wanting to say her name back. Get his head up from the damn floor. Wanting to promise something he wasn’t sure he could keep, 'cause he already broke all his promise for her. But, there’s nothing, just a dense, not quite it was a silence for suffocating pressure that erased the edges of himself until there was no border left between thought and dark.

When he came back, it was violent.

It’s like air punched into his lungs and his chest convulsed and make his body jerked against something soft, and feels wrong under him. Too soft. There should have been cold concrete and smell of dust. Blood thick in the back of his throat.

Instead there was light above him. Something too white and flat to his eyes, almost hurt his eyes. also, He caught a faint smell of chemicals, something sharp and sterile, that pulled at an old memory of hospitals from back in the day.

He blinked, and the world did not shift into nightmare. It stayed clean and then he felt it.

Something that warmth. Warm from other person that live, not like fever or pain. But a hand? Like the hand hold his. Feel like live and soft? Wrapped around his own like it had been there for a long time.

His fingers twitched and brushed skin that did not belong to him. He move his finger again, it’s his index. He felt the curve of a cheek resting near his knuckles. A faint, even breath against his wrist.

He lay still, listening to the mechanical beeping near his ear and the hammering of his own heart, trying to reconcile the impossible fact of being alive.

He should not be alive.

He remembered the certainty of it. The way the world had tilted. The way he had accepted the end without ceremony. He had outlived enough people to know when his number had been called.

This did not feel like heaven.

Heaven, he thought, would be softer than this. It would not carry the faint, sterile sting of antiseptic in the air, sharp enough to settle at the back of his throat. It would not be this quiet in a way that felt watched rather than peaceful. And it would not, under any circumstance, feel gentle toward a man like him. He had never known what heaven was supposed to look like, never even tried to imagine it.

So the thought of this being heaven felt strange, almost absurd, like his mind had reached too far for something it didn’t understand. no, if this were heaven, it had made a mistake, but it wasn’t hell either.

Hell would have greeted him properly, maybe. It would have been loud, unbearable, honest in its cruelty. Fire, or something close to it. Pain that didn’t leave room for doubt. In hell, at least, he would understand where he was. There would be no confusion, no slow unraveling of thought.

And he would have accepted it, because that, at least, would make sense to him. He wasn’t a good man, after all.

He had done too much for anything else to fit. Too many faces that never left him, no matter how hard he tried not to remember. Too many moments where the line between survival and something darker blurred until it didn’t matter anymore which side he stood on.

So this? this quiet, more silence with something live behind the door, this almost-kindness, felt wrong in a way he couldn’t name it.

Like standing somewhere he hadn’t earned.

He tried to move but pain hit him fast, sharp enough to knock the air out of his chest before he could brace for it. It tore up his side and settled there, heavy and throbbing, like something inside him had been pulled apart and stitched back wrong. A rough sound slipped out of him, low and broken, before he could swallow it down.

The air smelled clean more like chemicals and something bitter sitting at the back of his throat. His mouth felt dry, tongue thick, like he hadn’t used it in days or months. There was a weight on his chest, or maybe just the feeling of it, pressure that made each breath slow and careful.

Something moved near his hand. Warm.

The weight shifted. A chair scraped lightly against the floor, the sound sharp in the quiet.

Joel’s vision dragged downward, slow and unsteady, like it didn’t want to cooperate. The light hurt his eyes, somehow. Everything looked washed out, edges blurred, shapes not quite holding still. He forced his eyes to focus anyway.

There was someone there.

A figure at his side, close enough that he could see the outline before the details came in. Hair. Shoulders. A face that felt familiar before he could place it.

Ellie?

His throat worked, tried to say her name, tried to push it past the dryness, past the weight sitting in his chest. But nothing came out, just air.

A low hiss escaped him before he could stop it as he tried to lift his arm, wanting nothing more than to brush the hair from your face. The pain flared hot through his chest, pulling a rough groan from deep in his throat. He hadn’t meant to wake you. In that half-second, a quiet sorrow settled over him, heavy and tender; he was sorry to pull you from whatever fragile rest you had found, sorry that even now, broken and useless, he still managed to disturb the one person who had stayed.

You stirred at the sound.

Your body tensed, shoulders lifting as if surfacing from deep water, and your eyes snapped open with the wide, startled clarity of someone who had trained herself to wake at the smallest sign of him. For a breathless moment you simply looked at him, hair tousled and falling loose around your face, the faint crease from the mattress still pressed into your cheek like a secret the night had left behind. The dim light caught in your eyes, turning them soft and luminous, and something in Joel’s chest tightened at the sight of you, impossibly alive in a world that had forgotten how to be gentle.

The slight flush still lingering on your skin. The way your lips parted, trembling just enough to betray the storm behind them. Everything about you felt etched with care, with sleepless hours and he drank it in without a word, letting the feeling settle somewhere deep where words could not reach.

"Joel?” you breathed. oh god, escaped from your lips.

The sound of his name in your voice slid through him like honey, low and trembling, almost fracturing on the second syllable. “J-Joel…”

It tasted fragile on the air between you, sweet and aching. He stared, the fog in his mind thinning slowly, and realized with a deep, visceral pull that you were not Ellie.

He didn’t know who you were.

You moved toward him without hesitation. Your hand rose, and when it found his face, the touch was so unbearably soft it made his chest tighten. Your palm carried the faint roughness of calluses, yet the skin was velvet-warm, alive with the pulse of your blood. Your thumb traced his cheekbone slowly, deliberately, sending small sparks of sensation racing across his jaw and down his neck. He could smell you clearly now, something faintly sweet, like crushed herbs or the inside of your wrist after a long summer night. You leaned in closer. Your breath brushed his lips first, warm and humid, carrying the ghost of water and exhaustion. Then your mouth pressed to his forehead, soft and lingering, the heat of it blooming across his skin like sunlight soaking into dry earth. He felt the gentle pressure of your lips, the faint tremble in them, the way your hair fell forward and tickled his temple.

His eyes closed on instinct. His body remembered everything his mind had not yet reclaimed, the quiet thunder of your heartbeat so close to his. A slow shiver moved through him, deep and involuntary, like the first touch of skin after years of winter.

Joel’s mouth opened, the words already forming somewhere deep in his chest. Who the hell are you? Where’s Ellie? What is this place? but nothing came. His throat was a dry riverbed, cracked and empty, the kind of desert silence that had swallowed whole towns back when the world still made sense.

He pushed again, harder, air scraping uselessly against raw tissue, and his brow pulled tight in that uneasy frown she knew too well, the one that carved lines between his eyes like he was bracing for a fight he couldn’t even start.

he saw that you noticed right away.

“Hey,” you said softly, thumb still moving in slow, steady circles over his knuckles like muscle memory. “It’s okay. The doctor just took the tube out. They said your voice is coming back, it just needs a little time. Just take it easy, okay?”

Tube.

The word hit him sideways. A tube? In his throat? The confusion sharpened, pressing in behind his ribs until it felt like something alive trying to get out. None of this lined up, He stared at you, eyes narrowed, trying to force the questions through the dryness anyway, but his lips only twitched uselessly.

you didn’t wait for him to try again. you reached for the plastic cup on the side table, the condensation cool against your fingers, and slid your other arm behind his shoulders with the careful ease of someone who had done this exact thing more times than she could count. She lifted him just enough, no rush, no fuss, and brought the straw to his lips.

“Here,” she murmured, voice low and close. “Drink some.”

The water touched his tongue, and slid down his throat like forgiveness he hadn’t asked for. He took small sips, eyes never leaving your face, the desert in his mouth easing just a fraction while everything else inside him stayed cracked wide open. you watched him the whole time, patient and steady and a little scared, like you were afraid the next thing he tried to say might break whatever was left of them both.

“where's Ellie?” he rasped. The word scraped out, dry and uncertain, barely more than breath.

Your expression faltered, just a small, exquisite fracture across your face. “She’s fine,” you whispered, the words warm against his skin, heavy with relief and unspoken nights.

The answer didn’t sit right. He doesn't know why? Just the word fine didn’t belong anywhere near the world he remembered.

He frowned, pain tightening behind his eyes, and the idea unsettled him more than the pain.

He closed his eyes for a second, overwhelmed by the quiet intensity of your presence. The warmth of your skin. The steady brush of your thumb over his knuckles. The way your body leaned toward his without calculation.

He hadn’t been touched like that in a long time. Not with softness that wasn’t earned through blood or apology. Not with care that didn’t feel conditional.

your forehead dipped gently against his temple, careful of whatever bandage lay hidden there.

“You scared me,” you whispered. There was no anger in it, just exhaustion. your fingers tightened more securely around his, like you were anchoring him to something solid. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake,” you said, he can hear the way your voice barely holding together. “You can’t do this to me. I… I can’t do it without you.”

He felt like a man standing in a house that used to belong to him, but the furniture had been rearranged and he no longer knew where the doors were. and not knowing what to do.

He opened his eyes this time, when he feel you pull away from him. you were watching him with your doe- alike eyes like he might disappear if you blinked.

Joel studied you. The soft press of your hands lingered on his shoulders as you eased back, just far enough to study him. Your gaze moved over his face with careful, practiced intensity, as though you were reading symptoms written in the lines of his brow and the tension around his mouth.

“Is anything hurt?” you asked, your voice low and steady. “Any pain I can’t see?”

He guessed you were a doctor, but the thought didn’t quite fit. A nurse, maybe? No, that didn’t sit right either. You wore a simple white fitted tee and jeans, nothing clinical about you. Still, there was something in the way you looked at him that made him wonder exactly who you were. He couldn’t put a name or title to it, only that you felt like someone who knew how to look for what wasn’t being said.

"Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah… there’s pain.” His voice carried the heaviness of someone unused to admitting weakness aloud. Like the confession itself sat wrong in his mouth. He didn’t even know why he was telling you this. Maybe because your hands had stayed still the whole time. Maybe because you looked at him like he was something breakable and not just a man stitched together by old violence and stubbornness.

Or maybe because, somehow, it felt right. Joel swallowed hard, eyes fixed somewhere past your shoulder, toward nothing at all. “Side,” he added after a moment, the word catching slightly in his throat. His hand drifted unconsciously toward his ribs before stopping midway, fingers curling into his palm instead. “Right side… feels like it’s been torn open.”

The room settled around the silence between you. The low hum of the light overhead. The faint smell of antiseptic and rain clinging to his jacket. His breathing had gone uneven now, careful, measured, like every inhale needed permission first. “Head too,” he murmured quieter this time, jaw tightening. “Keeps poundin’.”

And when he finally looked at you, it wasn’t with embarrassment. Not exactly. It was something softer than that. Something almost boyish beneath all the exhaustion. Like he hated that you were seeing him like this.

“okay, okay. You’ll be okay,” you said. “And I’ll tell the doctor after this.” you sound somehow a little too excited for what Joel is about to see.

Joel stared at you for a second too long, and in that second he became suddenly aware of everything at once: the faint crease between your brows whenever you worried, the careful way your fingers hovered near him without forcing contact, the scent of soap and cold air lingering in your sweater. Small things. Forgettable things, maybe. Yet they reached him with startling precision, lodging somewhere beneath the ache in his ribs.

“You said…” His thumb brushed unconsciously against the edge of the blanket draped over him, fingers tense, uncertain. “You’ve been waiting. For me?”

And God, the way he said it, almost hesitant, made the question feel larger than it was. As if he already feared the answer before hearing it. As if some part of him couldn’t quite believe anybody would wait for him at all.

She nodded once, and the small gesture seemed to carry more weight than it should have. Two months, she said, and the number landed in him like a quiet shock, something too large to hold all at once. He looked at her as if the space between them had changed shape, as if her patience had been sitting there in the room all along, waiting with her. Her hand stayed around his, steady and unshowy, but it made him feel suddenly aware of his own pulse, the fragility of being touched with such care. He had the strange sense that he was being looked after in a way he did not know how to ask for, and maybe had never once expected. It unsettled him, and softened him at the same time. He wanted to understand why she had waited, why she had stayed, but all he could do was stand there inside the quiet of it, feeling the tenderness of her concern like something almost unbearable.

He was trying to summon something, a memory of her voice, her face, the way her thumb traced his skin like she had mapped it a thousand times.

“Where… what hospital is this?” he asked.

“You’re at St. David’s Medical Center,” you said

The thought flickered, distant and half-formed. His eyes shifted past you, taking in the room again. the steady light, and quiet, the way everything felt… intact.

“what? no, no, no…” he started, then stopped. its just came out as a disbelife and whisper to himself.

His hand shifted against the sheets, slow, like even that took effort. He looked back at you, really looked this time, like maybe the answer was in your face instead of the room.

“…How?” he asked finally, quieter now. “Is it still in Jackson?”

joel could see it in the way your breath caught, like something fragile inside you had been nudged out of place. your eyes searched his face, not for an answer—but for how much he meant by that.

“No,” you said after a beat, her voice gentler now. “It’s not in Jackson.”

Joel frowned.

The word no didn’t settle right. It only made things worse. His gaze drifted again, slower this time, like he was trying to force the room to make sense if he looked at it long enough.

"Then where the hell am i—” he muttered, the curse fraying at the edges before it could even finish, stolen by the sudden weight of exhaustion that pressed down on him like wet concrete.

He swallowed, the motion pulling a faint wince across his face as fresh pain bloomed raw along his throat. His chest rose and fell unevenly, each inhale a careful negotiation, like his body was still learning the rules of this impossible place.

“you're in Austin, Texas, joel....” you added.

That made him freeze.

This was not the quiet, measured stillness Joel had learned to carry — the kind a man develops after twenty years of surviving, when every decision could mean life or death. No, this was something altogether different. Sharper. Colder. It seized him completely, freezing the blood in his veins as though winter had come from inside his own body.

Austin. Texas.

The words echoed strangely in his mind, hollow and unnatural, like hearing someone speak your childhood language in a dream. Austin no longer existed. Not like this. Not clean and bright and humming with life, with machines that worked and lights that stayed on and warm hands holding his as if love were still a simple thing.

"...are you okay?"

In the world he remembered, Austin had burned. It had died screaming along with everything else — swallowed by infection and fire and the long, merciless collapse of civilization. It had taken his daughter with it. Sarah. To hear that name spoken so easily now, in this bright, impossible room, felt like a kind of blasphemy. As if someone had quietly dug up her grave and expected him to be grateful that the earth had given her back.

His eyes lifted back to yours, sharper now despite the haze still clouding the edges of his vision, the confusion hardening into something edged and dangerous.

“…What do you mean?” he said under his breath, the question low and rough, barely more than gravel dragged across concrete. Then the suspicion broke loose, raw and unfiltered, the old instincts clawing their way up before he could stop them. “Are you fucking kidding me?” His voice cracked on the words, still hoarse from the tube they’d pulled, but the accusation burned through anyway. “Are you a one of FEDRA? Is the girl that shot me one of your people... or your leader?”

The questions hung between you, heavy and trembling, carrying every nightmare he’d lived through: the blue uniforms, the quarantine zones, the cold efficiency of people who called slaughter order. His fingers tightened in your grasp without meaning to, not pulling away but holding on like the contact itself might keep the floor from dropping out beneath him.

“Joel…” Your voice came out small at first, cracked and uncertain. “What… what are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer right away. The anger was already sharpening, turning his jaw to stone. He could feel it in the way his fingers flexed inside yours, but pressing harder, almost accusing.

"just tell me?" his voice getting angrier somehow

Because if this was some new game, if you were part of it, if the clean white room, the way you looked at him like he was yours were all just another way to break him—then he’d rather the club had finished its swing.

Your breath hitched, the sound soft and unsteady. You leaned in closer without thinking, “I’m not with anyone like that. I'm willow, and I’m yours. I’ve been yours for years.” Your voice cracked, confusion and hurt braiding together until it was impossible to tell which was winning. " y-you even give me this ring, remember?" the ring on your finger catching the light like a taunt.

willow

It started low, a slow burn behind his ribs, the kind that had kept him alive for twenty years. He watched the way your shoulders tensed, the way your free hand hovered halfway to his cheek before dropping, trembling. That look, wide-eyed and lost, like he’d just spoken in a language you didn’t understand, only fed the fire. Because if this was real, if you really didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, then either the world had gone completely insane… or you were lying to him. And the thought that you, of all people, this woman who kissed his forehead like it was a promise, might be lying made something ugly twist tight in his gut.

“Joel, babe. There’s no... there’s no one who shot you. It was a car accident. On the highway. You swerved to avoid a truck and… and you don’t remember any of that?” you went on, words tumbling faster now, laced with a panic that only made his chest burn hotter. Your free hand rose again, hovering near his face like you wanted to touch him and didn’t dare.

A car accident. The words sounded so clean, so ordinary, they made his stomach turn.

He let out a short, bitter breath that scraped raw against his ruined throat. “A car accident,” he echoed, voice low and edged with disbelief. The anger was fully awake now, crawling higher, licking at the base of his throat. “You expect me to believe that? After everything? After the way the world ended? You’re telling me I’ve been lying here two months and the whole damn thing was just some fucking fender-bender in Austin, Texas?”

“what?… please, tell me what’s going on in your head. I don’t understand any of this. We... we can get through this. Us. you, me, the girls—” The plea only stoked the anger higher.

He could see it in your eyes—the genuine bewilderment, the way you looked at him like he was the one breaking something precious—and it made him want to shove the words back at you, make you feel the same fracture splitting open inside him.

“Yeah, well I don’t understand a goddamn thing either,” he rasped, the roughness in his voice turning sharp, ugly. His fingers tightened around yours, not gentle anymore, the grip almost bruising. “One minute I’m on the floor in Jackson with Ellie screaming my name, the next I wake up in some fairy-tale hospital with a woman I’ve never seen before telling me we’ve got daughters and a life in a city that shouldn’t even be standing. So forgive me if I’m having a hard time buying the ‘car accident’ story while you sit there looking at me like I’ve lost my mind and throwing around some bullshit about us—”

You flinched this time, but you didn’t pull away. And that, more than anything, unsettled him.

Are you out of your goddamn mind, kid? he thought. If this body weren’t already half-dead on me, I could put you down easy. But you stayed there anyway, close enough for him to feel the warmth coming off your skin, close enough that your hand still rested against him like you had forgotten it was there. Joel watched the confusion in your eyes shift slowly into hurt, quiet and unguarded, and the sight of it only made something uglier coil tighter inside his chest.

Because part of him had already begun to believe you.

“Joel,” you whispered again, voice trembling now, “I’m not lying to you. I swear I’m not. I don’t know what have you been through to this, or Jackson, or any of it. I just know I’ve been sitting here every day waiting for you to wake up and come back to me. To us.”

The room felt smaller suddenly, the beeping monitors too loud, the space between your faces charged with everything neither of you could quite name. His anger simmered there, hot and restless, while your confusion pressed back like a mirror, reflecting every fracture until it felt like the beginning of an argument neither of you had the strength for—but both of you were already stepping into.

The word us hit him like a gut punch.

His face twisted into something ugly, something mean and disbelieving, the kind of look he used to give raiders right before he pulled the trigger. Who the fuck is us? The thought roared through him, hot and vicious. There is no us between you and me. There never was. He didn’t know you. He didn’t want to know you. This soft, pleading stranger with her ring and her tears and her gentle hands had no right to that word.

“No,” he said suddenly, his voice rough and low. “No. No, that’s not what happened.”

you turned to look at him. Joel’s breathing had grown sharper, the anxiety clawing its way back up his throat. He pushed himself up slightly against the pillows, ignoring the burn in his side.

“Someone… a girl,” he continued, the words tumbling out faster, more urgent. “She shot me in the knee. Point blank. Then she beat the shit out of me. She had this goddamn club and she—” His voice cracked, but he forced the rest out. “She swung it at my head. That’s what happened. I’m not crazy. I didn’t get hurt in some fucking car accident. I know what I felt. I know what I saw.”

The room went completely still.

“Joel… hey, what are you talking about? There was no girl. It was a car crash on I-35. You swerved, hit the guardrail hard. They had to cut you out of the truck.”

Joel shook his head, jaw tight, eyes wild with frustration. “No. You’re wrong. All of it is wrong.” His gaze flicked toward you by the window, then back to you. “I was in Jackson. Ellie was there. She was screaming at me to get up. This wasn’t some accident on a highway that doesn’t even exist anymore. This was real. The blood, the pain, the way my leg gave out .... that was real.”

His chest was heaving now, the panic rising again, hot and suffocating. He looked between the two of you like you were both part of some elaborate lie meant to break him.

“I’m telling you,” he rasped, voice cracking with exhaustion and anger, “a girl beat me half to death with a golf club. She wanted me to suffer. That’s the last thing I remember. Not some fucking truck. Not Austin. Not any of this.”

The silence that followed felt suffocating. you glanced at him helplessly, clearly at a loss.

Joel’s hands were shaking where they gripped the sheets. He didn’t know who to trust anymore. Everything he said sounded insane even to his own ears, but it was the only truth he had left.

You cut him off mid-sentence, voice desperate, trying to reach the man you thought you still knew. “Joel, please—just breathe. tommy, ellie, and sarah are all waiting for you to wake up, okay. all of them is fine, there's no such a things like that, ”

"Sarah." the name landed like a blade between his ribs. "she so worried about ya,"

His eyes snapped to yours, the kind of look that had once made grown men step back. Anger surged through him in a white-hot flood, pure and blinding, drowning everything else. How dare you say her name? How dare you speak it so casually, like it was just another word, like you had any right to it? It felt like mockery. Like you were twisting the knife in the oldest wound he had, the one that had never healed, the one that still bled every time he closed his eyes. Sarah—his Sarah, his little girl, gone in a spray of bullets and screams—was not yours to claim. Not like this.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he snarled, voice low and trembling with fury, the words scraping out like broken glass. “You don’t get to say her name. You don’t get to stand there and mock me with it. My daughter is dead. She’s been dead for twenty goddamn years. And you’re using her name like—like it’s some fucking game to you?”

You blinked, confusion crashing over your face like cold water, eyes wide and glistening. “Who?" you asks. "Ellie? Sarah?” The names tumbled out of you in helpless bewilderment, soft and uncertain, as if testing them might make any of this real. his eyes snapped at you. “Joel, I—I don’t understand. Sarah’s our-" joel see when you corrected yourself. "....your daughter. she is at school right now with Ellie and Tommy waiting for the doctor to say you're awake. She’s been so scared—”

His eyes snapped again at the second mention of Sarah, harder this time, the rage and raw grief colliding until his vision blurred at the edges. The anger was everywhere now, choking him, making his chest heave with the effort not to shout.

Part of him wanted to tear his hand from yours, wanted to shove you back hard enough to wipe that look from your face, to split the hurt between you so he wouldn’t have to carry it alone. The instinct came fast, ugly, familiar. Like anger was easier to survive than fear ever was.

But the other part of him: the worn-down, splintering part that had been holding itself together by habit alone, couldn’t stop looking at you.

At the tears beginning to gather in your eyes, shining stubbornly even as you tried to blink them away. At the way your voice cracked around his name, soft and trembling, as though it meant something sacred to you. As though he meant something.

It was unbearable.

Not because you were weak. Not because you pitied him.

But because you looked at him like you still believed there was something left in him worth reaching for.

And God, that was crueler than anything. Crueler than the pain in his body.

The room seemed to draw inward around the two of you, walls bending closer with every sharp pulse of the monitors. The sound filled the silence too loudly, too steadily, until even the air between your faces felt alive with it, thin and electric and breaking apart by inches.

Joel kept staring at you with that same ugly look—suspicion tangled with anger, exhaustion sitting underneath it all like something ancient and incurable. His hands trembled inside yours despite himself, not with weakness alone but with the effort of holding everything in. And your expression only undid him further: the confusion there, the hurt slowly opening across your face like light through cracked glass.

You looked at him as though you could not understand how someone already half-destroyed could still keep choosing to wound himself further.

The feeling hit him again before he could outrun it.

Anxiety came down hard and sudden, vicious as a storm breaking through rotten wood. His chest seized violently, breath catching halfway in as though invisible hands had wrapped around his ribs and begun tightening, until even the smallest inhale hurt. A sharp pain bloomed beneath his sternum, hot and blinding, spreading with every frantic beat of his heart.

"you okay?"

For one terrible second, he thought his body might simply split apart from it.

Old grief rose first. Then fear. Then something worse than both.

Because beneath the panic, beneath the confusion and fury and pain, there was the unbearable feeling that he was losing something again before he had even remembered what it was.

And you were still there, holding his shaking hands like they belonged to someone worth saving. but then, “I don’t know who the fuck you are, okay?” The words tore out of him, raw and cruel, each one aimed to wound. “I don’t know you. I don’t remember your face, your voice, that goddamn ring on your finger—none of it. You keep talking about us and daughters and some perfect little life like I’m supposed to just nod and play along. But I don’t feel any of that. You’re a stranger to me. You’re a fucking stranger holding my hand like you own it, saying my dead daughter’s name like it’s nothing, and I can’t—”

He stopped, breath ragged, the anxiety clawing higher, tighter, making his voice shake with something ugly.

“I wake up and everything’s gone. Jackson. Ellie. Tommy. My Sarah. And instead I get you. Some woman I’ve never seen before telling me I’ve got a whole family I don’t remember. How the hell do you think that feels? Like I’m losing my goddamn mind. Or maybe I already lost it and this is the joke.”

The words landed like stones. He saw them hit you — watched the way your shoulders curved inward, the way your lips pressed together to trap whatever sound wanted to escape. He saw the fresh hurt bloom in your eyes, bright and devastating, and still he couldn’t stop the poison spilling out.

“You want me to believe you’re mine? That I chose this? That I gave you that ring and built some goddamn white-picket life in a city that shouldn’t exist anymore?” His laugh was bitter, broken. “I don’t even know if I could love someone like that anymore. Not after everything. Certainly not someone I can’t remember.”

But even as the venom left him, even as the anger tried to keep its grip, something inside his chest fractured wider.

He looked at your eyes: They were the saddest eyes he had ever seen in his life. for one brief second, felt something close to shame crawl beneath his skin.

Not just guilt but the terrible understanding that he was hurting someone who did not deserve to be hurt.

A tear slipped from your eye before you could stop it. Joel watched it trace a slow path down your cheek, catching the pale hospital light as it fell. And then came the flush blooming beneath your skin, delicate and sudden, spreading across your face like your body itself was embarrassed by the honesty of your grief.

You looked away for half a second, as if ashamed to be seen hurting in front of him.

That nearly undid him. Because beneath the exhaustion and the confusion and the anger twisting inside his chest, you suddenly looked unbearably young to him. Young in the way bruised things are open and exposed. Still foolish enough to care. And God, he did not know what to do with that.

Something tightened low in his stomach, sharp and uncomfortable, almost like grief but not quite. The sight of your tears made him feel clumsy inside his own skin, like his hands had become dangerous things without him noticing. Like every hard word he threw at you landed somewhere tender he hadn’t meant to touch. For the first time since waking up, Joel looked at you not like a threat, not like a stranger hovering too close to his bed—

but like someone he might already have ruined.

Joel watched as you lifted your hand and wiped the tear away roughly, almost angrily, like you were punishing yourself for letting it fall in front of him. The motion was jerky, ungraceful, nothing like the gentle way you had touched him earlier. It hurt more than he expected it to.

Then something buzzed in your pocket.

You pulled out a slim, sleek rectangle, a phone? but not like any phone or even radio they usually use, he remembered from before the outbreak. those thick and got keyboard on it. but now It look too thin as the screen glowing bright and alive with color. Just a perfectly functioning piece of the old world, as if the last twenty years had never happened. Joel stared at it, a fresh wave of unease crawling over his skin. Phones didn’t work anymore. Not like that. Seeing it in your hand felt wrong. Unnatural. Like proof that none of this was real.

you glanced at the screen, hesitated, then answered.

“Hey… no need, can you just come here, please” you said, your voice quieter now, trying to steady itself.

You turned slightly away from him, but not enough to hide anything. Joel could still see the shine of tears in your eyes, the way your free hand gripped the edge of the bed until your knuckles paled. “No, he’s awake. He just woke up a little while ago.” someone on other side say something, and you says. "yeah, he talking, i mean we are,"

He watched you the whole time.

His eyes didn’t leave your face, not even for a second. There was a tight, animal caution in his chest, the old instinct still working even though his body felt half-broken. Part of him kept waiting for the shift — for your hand to move suddenly, for something sharp to appear, for the gentleness to crack open and reveal what was really underneath. He wouldn’t have been surprised if you pulled a gun. In his experience, that was how these things usually ended.

While you were still on the phone, he turned his head slowly to the side, jaw clenched against the pain that flared down his neck. Through the gap in the thin curtain, the window showed him the city. They were high up. Very high. Buildings stood straight and whole, lights moving along the streets below, everything clean and ordinary in a way that made his stomach feel hollow. It didn’t look like a world that had ended. It looked like one that had simply kept going without him.

“Okay,” you said into the phone, voice quiet and tired. “Can you tell the doctor on the way here? Yeah… okay.”

You hung up and slipped the phone back into your pocket. For a moment you stood completely still, looking down at the floor like you needed the extra second to collect yourself. Then you lifted your head and met his eyes again.

Joel didn’t say anything. He just watched you. The flush was still on your cheeks, faint now, and your eyes were red at the edges. You had wiped the tear away so roughly it was like you were annoyed at yourself for crying. He noticed the small things how your fingers kept gripping the edge of the bed rail, even after everything he had said, the way your shoulders carried a weight that wasn’t just physical.

“Tommy’s downstairs,” you said quietly, without looking at him. “He’s going to come up in a minute.”

The squeaking sound of the chair cut through the silence like a small wound.

You dragged it back toward the wall with a slow, tired scrape, the rubber legs protesting against the linoleum. Joel tensed instantly, every muscle in his battered body pulling tight. His pulse spiked. For one sharp, instinctive second he was certain you were going to lift it — swing it hard across the room and bring it down on his head, finishing what the world had started. He braced for it, breath shallow, eyes never leaving you.

But you didn’t.

You simply collapsed into the chair, throwing your body down as if all the strength had suddenly left your legs. The movement was heavy, defeated. You curled forward, back rounding like a question mark, elbows digging into your knees, and buried your face in your palms. The posture was so raw, so private, that Joel felt he shouldn’t be watching. For a moment he was sure you were going to cry, really cry! the kind of crying that tore itself out of the chest and refused to be quiet.

He waited for the sound of it.

Instead, you stiffened, as though reminding yourself you were still in the room with him. You straightened your back just enough to look composed, though your shoulders stayed heavy and your head remained low. Your gaze fixed on the floor between your feet. Then, almost absentmindedly, your fingers began to move — tracing the band of the ring on your left hand, turning it slowly, nervously, around and around your finger like it was the only real thing left in the world.

Joel watched the small motion with a strange ache blooming behind his ribs. The way the light caught on the simple silver band as you twisted it. The way your thumb kept brushing over it, again and again, as if checking it was still there. As if checking he was still there.

There was something unbearably intimate about it. Something that made the air feel thick and warm between you, even with all the distance and silence and cruel words he had thrown at you earlier. He could see the exhaustion in every line of your body, the quiet war you were fighting just to keep yourself from falling apart in front of him.

And still, those eyes, when they eventually lifted again, held that same devastating softness.

He didn’t know what to do with any of it. The fear, the suspicion, the strange pull in his chest. So he simply kept watching you, silent and unsettled, as the fluorescent light hummed above you both and the city glowed indifferently beyond the window.

The silence stretched between you for a long moment, heavy and alive.

Then you lifted your head slightly, eyes still fixed somewhere near the floor, and asked in a voice so soft it barely disturbed the air:

“You don’t really remember me at all, do you?”

The question came out small and fragile, almost apologetic for existing. With it, a sad smile touched your lips — weak, trembling at the edges, the kind of smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. It was more like surrender. A small, tired curve that knew it wouldn’t reach your eyes and didn’t even try. It made something inside Joel tighten painfully.

He stared at you, chest still aching from the earlier surge of anxiety, his body heavy against the hospital bed. The question hung there, simple and devastating. He could see the way your fingers kept turning the ring around and around, slower now, as though the motion could steady you.

For a second he didn’t answer. He just looked at that weak, sorrowful smile and felt the strange weight of it settle deep in his stomach. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. You were looking at him like he had once meant everything, while all he could offer back was confusion and suspicion and the cold certainty that he had never seen your face before today.

“No,” he said finally, his voice low and rough, scraped raw from disuse. “I don’t.”

Your sad little smile faltered but didn’t disappear completely. It only became sadder, thinner, as if you had already known the answer but still needed to hear it out loud. Your eyes shimmered again, that unbearable softness returning full force, and Joel felt the now-familiar twist in his chest — guilt and something else he didn’t want to name it.

You nodded once, barely perceptible, still playing with the ring like it was a lifeline.

“okay... ” you whispered, almost to yourself. “at least you didn't forgot your family.”

You simply sat there in the chair, back slightly curved, wearing that small, broken smile like armor, while the city lights glowed quietly beyond the window and the distance between you felt wider than ever.

Joel kept watching you, unable to look away, the image of that weak smile burning itself into him long after you lowered your gaze again.

His eyes were fixed on you as you shook your head, then you let out a small, broken sound, almost like a chuckle in disbelief at what had happened.

“I don’t know what’s worse, Joel. That you don’t remember me… or that some part of me still believes if I just wait long enough, you’ll come back to me anyway. Even though I can see in your eyes that you already left.”

Joel felt the words sink into him like hooks.

Something heavy and painful lodged itself in his throat. He stared at you, at that small, devastated smile still clinging to your lips, at the way your shoulders curved like the weight of loving him was slowly crushing you. The anxiety in his chest tightened again, but this time it was mixed with a guilt so sharp it almost made him flinch.

Jesus Christ, he thought. How do you say something like that to a man who doesn’t even know your name? How do you sit there and bleed like this for someone who looks at you like a threat?

He hated it. He hated how your sadness made him feel small. He hated that some broken part of him wanted to reach out and touch your hand anyway. Most of all, he hated that he had nothing real to give you.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he rasped finally, his voice low and rough, almost angry at how unsteady it sounded. “I can’t lie to you. I look at you and… I feel nothing. Not the way you want me to. There’s just this blank space where you say my life used to be.”

He swallowed hard, eyes dropping to your hands, to that ring you kept touching like a wound.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, the words feeling foreign and insufficient on his tongue. “I’m sorry you’re hurting like this. But I didn’t ask for any of it. I didn’t ask for you to wait two months by my bed. I didn’t ask for daughters I don’t remember. I woke up and everything I know is gone… and you’re looking at me like I’m supposed to fix that. Like I’m supposed to love you when I don’t even know who the hell you are.”

He met your eyes again, his own gaze tired and conflicted.

“I’m not him,” he said quietly, almost gently this time. “Whoever the man was who looked at you like you were his whole world… I ain’t him. Not anymore. Maybe I never will be again.”

Joel looked away toward the window, jaw tight, the city lights blurring slightly in his vision. Inside his chest, the guilt twisted deeper. Because even as he said the words, even as he tried to push you away, a small, terrified part of him wondered if he was making the biggest mistake of his life by letting someone who loved him this much slip through his fingers.

You looked at him for a long moment with those blank eyes, eyes so full of sadness they seemed emptied of everything else. There was no anger left in them, no fight. Just a vast, quiet exhaustion that made the room feel colder.

Then a sudden scoff from you that broke the silence, almost a sneer, like you were disgusted with yourself for still caring.

“i hope you do a little better and put a effort when you see the girls,” you said, your voice low and flat. “They’re your daughters. You’re their only hope right now.”

He stared at you as you said them. There was no longer any plea in them, only a weary resignation that somehow hurt more than any accusation. Joel watched as you pushed yourself up from the chair. Your movements were slow, heavy, like your body had grown too heavy to carry. You walked over to the large window he had been glancing at earlier and pulled the thin curtain open with one sharp tug. afternoon light flooded the room, softer and warmer than the harsh fluorescent glow. The city stretched out beneath you... alive, glowing, impossibly intact.

Joel stared past you at the view, his chest tightening again at the sight of a world that refused to match his memories. You stood there with your back to him, arms wrapped around yourself, silhouetted against the glass. The light caught in your hair and made the ring on your finger glint faintly. You didn’t turn around. You didn’t say anything else. You just stood there, looking out at the city like it might give you answers he couldn’t.

Joel felt something shift uncomfortably inside him. Those blank, sorrow-filled eyes stayed burned into his mind even now that you weren’t facing him. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. The silence between you felt thicker than before — full of everything you hadn’t said, and everything he didn’t know how to feel.

He stayed quiet, watching the gentle rise and fall of your shoulders, wondering how much longer you could keep holding yourself together when he kept breaking you apart.

The door burst open.

Both of you turned at the sound, your body pivoting fully from the window in one fluid, instinctive motion, no longer offering him your back. The golden sunlight that had been outlining your silhouette now spilled across your front, catching in your eyes and illuminating the quiet exhaustion etched into your features. Joel felt the shift like a current passing through the room. Your gaze landed on him first before moving to Tommy.

Tommy came in fast, boots loud against the floor, breathing hard like he had run the whole way from wherever bad news lived in this too-bright city. The rush of air that followed him carried the scent of outside—dust, engine oil, and the faint metallic tang of evening settling over concrete. His hair was disheveled, jacket half-buttoned, eyes wide with that familiar mix of panic and fierce love Joel almost recognized.

“Joel—Jesus Christ, willow said you were awake,” Tommy’s voice cracked as he crossed the room in long strides, stopping short when he saw you standing by the window, rigid and silent. "Jesus, you scared the hell out of us." His gaze flicked between the two of you, reading the thick air, the way your arms hugged your ribs like armor. Something in Tommy’s face softened with understanding, then tightened again with worry.

Tommy obviously knew you. There had been no hesitation in his brother when he looked at you, none of that suspicion Joel had first clung to because suspicion was easier than the alternative. Easier than believing you were exactly what you said you were.

Because if Tommy knew you, really knew you, then you hadn’t lied to him.

Which meant the look on your face earlier had been real too. The silence after his cruel words. The way your mouth parted slightly, as if you had almost said something back before deciding against it. He remembered it now with painful clarity. That quiet kind of hurt people try to hide because they don’t think they’re allowed to feel it in the first place.

And God, he had done that to you.

he’d rather die than speak to you now, knowing he was the one who hurt you.

...

YOU (WILLOW)

You sat in the parking lot with the food balanced on your lap, the paper bag already going translucent with grease. The Coke beside you had started sweating down the cup, dampening the fabric of your coat where it rested against your thigh. You could hear children somewhere outside laughing too loudly, backpacks slamming against lockers, car doors opening and closing in quick succession. Life continuing with this terrible ease.

when the doctor spoke, somehow made it worse.

Like if he had sounded alarmed, or uncertain, or visibly disturbed by any of this, maybe you could have matched his emotion properly. But he spoke in that careful, measured tone doctors used when they had already accepted the situation long before you had.

You sat across from him in the consultation room with your hands clasped so tightly together your knuckles hurt. There was a coffee stain on the sleeve of your sweater from two days ago. Or maybe three. You couldn’t really remember anymore. Time had begun collapsing strangely since the accident. Nights folding into mornings without edges between them.

“He remembers his brother,” you said. “his daughters.”

The doctor nodded once. “Yes.”

You stared at him. The fluorescent light above buzzed softly. Somewhere outside the room a phone rang twice and stopped. “But not me.”

Another pause.

You hated the pauses most. The pauses were where reality entered the room.

“Memory retrieval after brain trauma can be selective,” he explained. “Sometimes emotionally significant memories remain accessible. Sometimes certain relationships become… disconnected temporarily.”

Disconnected. The word made something sharp twist low in your stomach.

“He knew me before,” you said.

“Yes.”

“He loved me.” you murmur.

The doctor lowered his eyes briefly then. Not avoiding the question exactly. Just moving carefully around it, like somebody stepping over broken glass.

“I understand that.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” Your voice sounded strange suddenly. “Because if he remembers Ellie, and Tommy, and Sarah, then why not me?”

The question stayed there between you.

Why not me.

You realized then that you had been thinking it over and over since Joel opened his eyes.

Not: Will he recover?

Not: Will things go back to normal?

Just: Why not me.

The doctor folded his hands together on the desk. “The brain doesn’t organize memory according to fairness,” he said gently.

You almost laughed at that, not because it was funny, because the sentence felt obscene somehow. Fairness. As though this had anything to do with fairness anymore.

“He looked at me,” you said after a moment. “Like I frightened him.”

The doctor didn’t answer immediately. You kept speaking anyway because stopping felt impossible now.

“He kept asking for Ellie. He remembered Sarah immediately. Tommy too. He remembered things that apparently don’t even exist anymore inside his head. But when he looked at me,” your throat tightened suddenly. “Nothing. There was just nothing.”

Your voice cracked slightly on the last word and you looked down immediately, embarrassed by it. The doctor waited. You hated that too. The patience. The gentleness. As though your grief had become medically predictable.

“But he did know me,” you insisted again, quieter this time. “You understand that, right? We've been together like... almost five years. seeing him every single day, and we-we going to married, and-and i don't know have another kid. He used to…” You stopped.

'Used to' is the saddest phrases you could ever say. The phrase hollowed something inside your chest.

The doctor leaned back slightly in his chair.“Miss Grant,” he said carefully, “people often assume memory is purely factual. But autobiographical attachment is extremely complicated. Sometimes after trauma the brain preserves certain identities while suppressing others associated with emotional intensity, stress, or disorientation.”

You blinked at him. Suppressing others. The words sounded almost violent.

“So I’m stressful?” you asked.

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

He hesitated.

And again you thought: there it is. That terrible little hesitation before somebody says something that changes your life permanently.

“What I mean,” he said slowly, “is that memory loss is not always random. Sometimes the mind protects itself in ways we don’t fully understand.”

You stared at him for a long moment. Then shook your head immediately. “No.”

He stayed silent.

“No,” you repeated. “Because that makes it sound intentional.”

“I’m not suggesting he chose this.”

“But why me?” you asked again, suddenly unable to stop. “Why am I the missing part? Why does he remember everyone except me?”

Your voice had gone thin now. Almost shaking.

You pressed your palms hard against your eyes for a second, breathing carefully.

“He remembered his daughters,” you whispered. “Do you understand how strange that is? He remembers being a father. Just not being my.....”

The doctor’s expression softened almost imperceptibly.

And somehow that softness finally broke something in you.

“He used to know me better than anyone,” you said quietly. “He used to look at me and…” You swallowed hard. “God. He used to look at me like I was home to him.”

The room stayed silent after that.

Then finally, very softly, the doctor said:

“I know this is painful.”

And the strange thing was, hearing him say painful almost made you angry. Because painful sounded far too small a word for what this actually was.

Painful was a migraine. A broken wrist. Bad news over the phone.

Because if Joel truly felt nothing, this would actually be simpler. Cleaner. You could grieve properly then. People survived rejection every day. Survived divorce. Survived widowhood.

But this was something stranger.

He looked at you like there was something inside him trying unsuccessfully to reach toward you through locked glass.

And maybe that was the cruelest possibility of all. To still exist somewhere inside another person without them being able to find you.

...

You took another bite of the burger because your body needed something, even if your mind rejected the idea of eating entirely. The meat tasted too salty now. Or maybe that was just the tears reaching the corners of your mouth. You wiped your face with the heel of your hand and stared through the windshield at nothing in particular.

It’s strange, you thought. How quickly a person can become lonely inside their own life.

Not even this morning, Joel had still known your name. Maybe not speaking it, because he was unconscious and machines had been breathing for him and the doctors kept using words like pressure and swelling and wait. But somewhere underneath all that, he had still belonged to you in the ordinary way husbands belong to their wives. His toothbrush still sat beside yours at home. His coffee mug still waited in the sink. The flannel he wore most often was still hanging over the chair in your bedroom because you hadn’t washed it yet. It smelled too much like him.

And now suddenly you were somebody standing at the edge of his bed introducing yourself like a stranger.

The thought made your stomach turn violently. You laughed a little under your breath then, though there was nothing funny in it. What are you supposed to do with a relationship after only one person remembers it?

You kept thinking maybe there was a correct way to behave. Some proper version of yourself that would make this easier for him. Less frightening. Maybe if you had not cried. Maybe if you had touched him less. Maybe if you had not looked so devastated every time he stared at you blankly.

But then another thought came immediately after. No, because even if you had done everything perfectly, he still would not remember you.

That was the unbearable thing. You rested your forehead briefly against the steering wheel. You still had to pick up the girls.

Your eyes burned from crying.

You took another bite of the burger and forced yourself to eat half because otherwise Tommy would notice later. Tommy noticed things. Not in the way Joel did, quietly and immediately, but eventually. Like a storm warning arriving a little after the rain had already started.

The burger had gone lukewarm.

You chewed anyway.

People always say grief steals your appetite. This had never been true for you. Grief did not make you less hungry. It simply made eating feel absurd. The body continuing with its ordinary needs while the heart behaved like something mortally wounded.

You chewed slowly.

A girl crossed the parking lot holding hands with her father. She was laughing at something he said, head tilted back completely without caution, the way children laugh when they trust somebody absolutely.

You had loved Joel for years before you realized the frightening part of it wasn’t losing him.

It was building an entire life around somebody until your memories no longer made sense without them inside it.

You thought about the hospital room again. Joel looking at you with suspicion first. Then anger. Then something worse afterward. Guilt.

That part stayed with you.

Because underneath all his fear, he had looked ashamed after making you cry. As though some instinct inside him still recoiled from hurting you even when his mind no longer understood why.

The thought settled into your chest strangely warm and painful at once. Maybe memory lived somewhere deeper than the brain. Somewhere inside the body itself. Or maybe you were becoming pathetic now. The kind of woman who searched for signs of love in tiny meaningless gestures because the larger thing had already disappeared.

You swallowed hard.

You rested your forehead briefly against the steering wheel. Your chest tightened until breathing hurt.

if you hold back on the emotions, if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them, you can never get to being detached. You stay afraid of them.

You wondered if that was true.

Because lately you felt like all you had done was feel.

Fear.

Hope.

Relief.

Then grief.

Then hope again.

Then grief again.

An endless cycle.

The doctor had told you memory loss was complicated. That emotional pathways could survive even when memories disappeared. That Joel might still feel connected to you in ways he couldn't explain.

Might. Such a terrible word and hope lives inside words like might. So does suffering, You took another bite, chewed slowly.

The truth was, you had spent two months preparing yourself for almost every outcome imaginable.

For a second you honestly considered driving somewhere else entirely. Just continuing down the highway without stopping. Leaving the city. Leaving the hospital. Leaving the terrible ache of being looked at by your husband like you were some woman who wandered accidentally into his room.

But the thought vanished almost immediately because there was nowhere you could go where your life would not follow you.

You closed your eyes briefly. For one absurd moment, you think it might be easier to choke on the burger and die right here in the school parking lot. Not because you want to die—you don't. That's the strange thing. You want tomorrow. You want coffee in the morning. You want Sarah yelling from upstairs that she can't find her shoes even though they're exactly where she left them. You want Ellie stealing fries and denying it with complete sincerity. You want Joel. More specifically, you want the version of Joel who knows you. But grief has a way of making death seem less frightening than absence. Because death, at least, is honest. Death closes the door and leaves you outside it. This is different. This is being invited inside and discovering nobody recognizes your face.

You imagine the burger catching in your throat, imagine the panic of it, the desperate search for air, and think how ridiculous it would be for your life to end over fast food and heartbreak. Then again, heartbreak itself feels ridiculous. You spend years building a life with someone. You memorize the way they take their coffee, the shape of their silences, the exact look they get when they're trying not to laugh. They become woven into your days so completely that you stop noticing where they end and you begin. And then one morning they wake up and look at you like a stranger.

You swallow hard and feel the food move painfully down your throat. No, you don't want to die. What you want is far more impossible than that. You want to walk back into that hospital room and have Joel look at you the way he did yesterday. You want him to remember why he loved you. You want, just for five minutes, to stop feeling like you're mourning someone who is still alive.

Then you heard knock on the car window and Ellie’s voice outside the car.

“Willy?”

You looked up too fast, wiping your face immediately with both hands, still chewing the last bite of burger like an idiot. Ellie stood a few feet away outside the passenger window, backpack hanging off one shoulder, staring at you with that sharp, observant expression that always made you feel transparently human.

For one horrible second neither of you said anything. Then Ellie frowned slightly.

“…you okay?”

am i okay?

'Cause I'm not old, but I am tired / I'm not strong, I'm very weak / I'm not old, but I am tired / I'm not here, I'm somewhere else / I'm one hundred ninety-six in dog years / I have seen enough / I've seen it all — Halsey, Dog Years.

You haven't lived in the Boston QZ for your entire life, but it certainly feels like it— Your parents came in when you were eight years old, about a year after Outbreak Day, when the Quarantine Zone was still fresh, with FEDRA just starting to take over the country and people still willing to trust their government to keep them safe. It is the only life you know and, while it is not perfect, it's certainly better than facing the dangers outside FEDRA's protection: You grew up hearing stories of raiders and slavers and how the infected outnumbered people at an alarming rate, how it was utterly impossible to survive without the watchful eye of FEDRA and its harsh laws.

Things are comfortable, even though they're not good, and that's more than most people have. You mother died just before your tenth birthday, an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire between FEDRA soldiers and the freedom fighters. Your father, a violent smuggler with a penchant for booze and pills, spends more time outside the QZ's walls than inside the tiny one-bedroom apartment the two of you share.

You're used to being alone by now, working triple shifts at the speakeasy and having to sneak your way back home just as the sun is starting to come up, risking your life for a couple of ration cards — more if you're in pigtails, even more if your shirt is low cut — that barely cover the amount you have to pay to keep a roof over both of your heads.

Everything changes when, for the first time since your mother died, your father is gone for longer than a couple of weeks. Usually his smuggle runs last a week or two at most before he comes home, drinks himself to a stupor over the weekend and then leaves again by Monday morning. This time, when the two weeks are up and he doesn't come back, there's a small part of you that is happy for it. The bruises he's given you are just starting to fade, the cut above your eyebrow finally closing up when the doubt creeps in and you begin to wonder whether or not this is the time your father will not come back home at all.

By the end of the first month he's gone, you know something happened. You're not sure if he simply left you behind or if he's dead or injured somewhere, but you know this isn't normal. So, one early morning, you make your way to the northern district of the QZ, where you know Abe lives— He's the only one with a long-distance radio and no affiliations to FEDRA or the Fireflies, the man your father once said he'd contact if he ever needs to speak to you while he's gone. In over a decade of smuggling your father hasn't tried to reach out to you once, but he also has never been late, and you figure maybe Abe would be able to give you a proper answer.

You stay in line for five and a half hours, a handful of ratios stuffed inside your bra, but your meeting with Abe only lasts a couple of minutes: He eyes you with suspicion, scowling the moment you say your father's name, and then tells that he would require ten ration cards to tell you if there's a message, and then another fifteen to read said message if it does exists— With no refund of the initial ten in case your father hasn't contacted you at all. You know extortion when you see it, has faced it plenty of times — Most men are always eager to take advantage of a young woman with no one to back her up —, and twenty-five ration cards is simply not something you can afford without going hungry or risking loosing your apartment.

For the first time in your life, you're truly alone. There's no one to run to, no one to help you or save you in this situation and that is somehow worse than all of the beatings and offensive words your father has thrown at you for the past two decades, the financial weight of having to provide for yourself in a world that is rigged against your survival brings you the sort of desperation you have never felt before.

It is that desperation that brings you to Joel Miller.

Joel has always been a constant in your life; he had worked alongside your father when you were little, always a solid shadow at the edge of your childhood memories, but they had a rough falling out after your father double crossed him sometime during your teenagehood and had, since then, become competitors inside the QZ. Now he is mostly a looming threat, some dark nefarious figure that might take away your father's livelihood at any moment.

He is not the sort of man you ever want to mess with, especially because you're not sure whether he's the vindictive type— He may as well hold your father's wrongdoings against you and refuse to help or worse: he could rat you out to FEDRA, use the opportunity to usurp the loyal clientele your father has or use his absence to wipe him out entirely. But you hear from Joan that hears from Elizabeth that hears from Eric that Joel Miller is friends with Abe and you figure that, maybe, Joel would be decent enough to bargain with the man for you. So, with an offering of bathtub moonshine you steal from work and tears in your eyes, Joel makes the deal; the bottle is probably worth a lot less than what he could've charged you but he doesn't bargain, instead choosing to grunt, take the bottle and slam his apartment's door in your face. He shows up at your place two days later, just as you start to panic thinking that maybe he's conned you out of some liquor, with a blank face and bad news: There has been no message, and although Joel promises to check in with the radio guy periodically, your father doesn't try to contact you at all in the days after that.

After that, Joel becomes a constant fixture in your life: He walks you home from the speakeasy after your shifts, and he fixes your shower or reinforces your front door or drops by with new shoes or food after a successful run. You find ration cards in your coat pockets or slipped under your door whenever you start working the triple shifts again, though he has never admitted to being the one putting them there: Every act of care comes with stony silence or a scowl, but Joel is always there, solid and within reach whenever you need him. So, you do the stupidest thing you could possibly do: You repay him with stolen alcohol. It starts with the small bottle that you use to bribe him that first time, but you become bolder and bolter as the months crawl on, swiping bigger and more expensive bottles whenever you can.

The owner, a mean-looking man named Bryan, catches you red-handed on a snow-heavy night in December. The beating itself isn't the worst you've ever gotten — someone robbed you when you were fourteen, taking a whole's week worth of rations and your father had always blamed you for that, his punishment even more painful than the shiner the thief had given you — but it's close enough and, as you stumble home through the snow-covered streets in the skimpy clothes you wear for better tips, all you can do is think that you got luck: Bryan could've cut off your fingers, or raped you or killed you or a thousand other horrible things that would wield a lot more damage than what he did and most people wouldn't have batted an eye; Hell, half the people you know probably would've thought you deserved it.

You're halfway home when panic truly sets in, outweighing the pain and the cold as you start to do the math— You're fresh out of a job, with rent looming within the next couple of days and you still don't have enough cards to cover it, let alone all of the other expenses you have; the pantry is almost empty, a single loaf of stale bread that you've been rationing for a few days while you waited for payday, and you still need to pay your neighbor for the winter socks she's knitted for you.

You're so terrified at the knowledge that you'll be homeless within the next week that you don't even notice Joel approach until it's too late, his cracked hands grabbing your shoulders and pushing you away from the main street just in time to miss the FEDRA soldier patrolling the area.

You shriek, your brain taking longer than it usually would to understand what is happening. Joel pins your back to his chest, one hand wrapped around your middle while the other slams over your mouth— The rough touch to your tender face has you whimpering, pain blossoming all over.

"It's me. Calm down." He whispers, holding the position for a moment longer while the soldier walks past the alleyway the two of you are in before he lets you go. You try to keep your head down so your hair fall over the bruises that are already forming but your face is so covered in blood that you can see the red liquid has stained Joel's palm. He looks at it for a second as if he can't comprehend what happened before he's crowding you against the wall, his surprisingly gentle hands tugging your chin towards him.

"I'm fine." You say in the silence that follows, though that's very much not true. Joel takes in a deep breath, his entire face scrunched.

"Who did this to you?"

"Joel, it's—"

"Who?"

You bring a hand up, your fingers wrapping around his wrist; the touch is meant to stop him, your intentions on fully pulling his hand away but you find it grounding instead, as if simply feeling Joel's rapidly beating pulse point beneath your fingertips is enough to melt the anguish away.

"Bryan." You relent, because you know he won't let go otherwise. "I had it coming."

"He'll pay. He ain't got no right to—"

"I stole from him." The admission is small, the words barely coming out of your lips; you didn't mean to tell him, the last thing you want is for him to connect the dots and realize you had been stealing for him. "I'm lucky he didn't do worse."

Joel goes entirely still, his hand still gripping your chin, his dark eyes staring you down so intensely it makes you squirm. A beat, and then another, and you watch in real time as realization washes over him.

Joel drops your chin like you've burned him. "Goddamn it, kid. Are you really that fuckin' stupid? Don't cha think that—"

"Joel, please." You whine, your eyes welling up with tears. "I don't need this right now. I'm cold, and everything hurts, and I'm out of a job. Just… Just don't lecture me right now, okay? I don't need it."

For a second, you think he'll ignore and go on his tirade— He looks like he wants to, but then his jaw locks and his nostrils flare and that's it. Joel swallows his emotions down in such an efficient manner it awes you and you barely have time to register the blankness of his face before he's wrapping his own jacket around you.

"Let's get you home and cleaned up."

Home, as it turns out, is Joel's place. You don't have the energy to argue despite the fact that the only thing you want to do is to crawl under your blanket and cry until you pass out, and you sit by the kitchen table as he cleans your face and neck with a wet rag. The apartment is cold even though Joel does his best to insulate the windows, and you shiver in your wet clothes— both from the remnants of snow that seem ingrained inside your bones and the heatwave that followed from Joel's touch, your body burning up from inside out at every careful touch of his hands. Once you seem clean enough, he brings you a chilled bottle out of the freezer, the clear liquid sloshing inside and you're sure it's probably either moonshine or vodka; Most likely moonshine, illegally made by some of the people brave enough to cook up such a thing within the city's walls.

"Put it over your eye, or it's goin' to swell shut."

You do as he says, but your heart races inside your chest as Joel kneels in front of you, carefully unlacing your boots.

"Joel, what—"

"Need to get'cha out of these wet clothes." He mumbles, not looking at you. Joel helps you out of your shoes and socks, and then turns his back at you and busies himself on the stove while you change from your work clothes to his— boxer shorts, wool socks and a thick sweatshirt that you're sure must've costed him a small fortune. You're still cold by the time Joel sets a steaming mug of tea on the table, but you're more comfortable than you've been in months.

Something changes between the two of you that night, tangled together in Joel's bed, his heartbeat steady under your cheek and his hand in your hair as you cry yourself to sleep. You go back to your apartment the next morning but just to pick up your personal belongings, Joel as a bodyguard as you collect what you can inside his backpack; you don't have much anyway, and you donate all of your father's belongings to the family two apartments down— More out of spite than anything else, you keep his favorite pair of boots as a gift to Joel. He takes the boots with an expression that seems to know exactly what you're doing, presses a kiss to the top of your head as if he's done it a million times, and clears out a drawer for you in his wardrobe.

Bryan goes missing three days after you move into Joel's place, and then they find his body five days after that, his face beaten almost beyond recognition, every single one of his fingers broken. His son takes over the speakeasy and invites you back, probably because he doesn't know what you did— Joel doesn't let you go back, claiming he doesn't trust the son and that you deserve better than being harassed by drunk men all night. You take odd jobs here and there, wanting to contribute with your share of rations but eventually Joel convinces you to quit altogether: Between the smuggling and the temporary jobs he takes from FEDRA he's certain he can provide enough for the two of you, and that you shouldn't be risking and exhausting yourself over nothing. You try to pull your weight around the house then, keeping it cleaner than he ever did, stitching up his socks and jackets and trying to make a meal out of the crappy food FEDRA distributes.

Housewife is the word that Tess uses for you. She says it with a sneer, scoffing whenever Joel tries to deny it; he says you're just a kid, that you're too young to be on your own and that you need him. She says that you're too old to need a daddy, and Joel slams his fist down on the table and they don't see each other for a few weeks. By the time Tess is back, it's as if nothing ever happened— She doesn't apologize and neither does he, or maybe they've exchanged apologies somewhere you weren't privy to, but Tess doesn't quit with the insults. Kept girl, plaything, pet— All names she uses whenever Joel isn't around, and then ignores you completely whenever he is.

Truth is, you find that you don't mind the nicknames. Joel calls you kid, kiddo, sweet girl— Also only when the two of you are alone, using your name whenever there is anyone listening and you've come to understand that there is a lot about Joel that he doesn't show to the world: He's feared inside the QZ, most people crossing the street whenever he's around, doing whatever they could to stay out of his way and only coming to him whenever they needed something no one else could bring but with you he's the sweetest man you've ever dealt with, quiet yet caring in a way that you haven't seen from anyone else.

The first time the two of you kiss, it feels like you've been doing it for all of your life; Joel had been gone for a couple of days, a pill run beyond the QZ's walls that made you sleepless. Tess hadn't gone with him this time around, which only made everything worse— For all the woman hated you, you knew she'd give her life to protect his. He comes home so late it's almost morning, his clothes soaked in blood that isn't his and his knuckles scraped raw.

You're not sure which one of you moves first: He's crowding you the second the door closes, and then his lips are pressing against yours, hungry and desperate. He kisses you until you the both of you are breathless, the still wet blood from his shirt soaking into yours: A bond that no soap or water can wash away even after the proof of your bodies mending together is discarded.

Joel tells you about Sarah in the middle of the night, when his nightmare wakes the both of you and he can't hide the tears. He doesn't tell you exactly how she died, just that it happened on Outbreak Day, and you request stories of happy memories to get his mind off of it. He tells you about the soccer practices and early Saturday matches, about the hikes they used to go on with Tommy and about the time she begged him to paint her room pink and then had him repaint it with purple a couple of weeks later, when she decided she hated pink. Joel talks more than you've ever seen him do, long fully formed sentences rather than the short words and grunts you're used to and it's like you're seeing yet a new side of him— Something soft and sacred that he's been hiding from the entire world, even from those closest to him.

"She would hate the man I became." He says eventually, after a short lull between tales of Sarah's first day in kindergarten. "The monster I became."

You're not certain how to deal with the self-loathing in his voice, especially because you know it's true— Joel's a terrible man, broken and violent and capable of unspeakable things, and you doubt the little girl from his memories would be proud of him for it. You press a kiss to the top of his head much like he seems to enjoy doing to you.

"There's always time." You whisper. "As long as you're alive, you still have time to make her proud."

He leaves before you wake the next morning but greets you with a kiss when he comes home in the evening, his breath smelling of whiskey and pupils dilated from the pills he swears he isn't taking anymore.

The afternoon you run into Robert's goons beating the ever living fuck out of Tess, there is a brief second in which you consider walking away— She's been nothing but horrible to you even when you were at your most vulnerable, and you doubt she'd intervene in your favor if it was the other way around. But your feet move before you can second guess yourself, plucking a large plank of wood from a rubbish pile close to you and hitting the bigger of the men as hard as you can in the back of the head: You miss a little, hitting him in the back of the neck but he falls like a sack of bricks anyway, his skull cracking against the pavement. Tess is on the smaller guy before he can jump you, her knee pressing to his neck until he stops thrashing.

Tess doesn't thank you, but you can tell she looks at you differently after that, staring you in silence for long periods of time. When she calls you by your name rather than an insulting nickname for the first time, you're so stunned that she scoffs and walks away in the few seconds it takes you to respond.

"You should leave him." She tells you once, her eyes glued to the radio as she waits for the message from Frank. Joel's nowhere to be found, but you still feel his presence in the cramped apartment anyway as if his very essence loomed over your shoulder. "This is not healthy for either you."

"I would die without him." You mean it literally, too— Joel is your saving grace, the only person to offer you a hand and keep you warm and fed in this horrifying world.

"That's exactly why you should go." She says. "No man should own your soul like that."

You wonder if she's speaking from experience, and you wonder if it has anything to do with Joel but How Can You Mend a Broken Heart by the Bee Gees starts playing on the radio and then Tess is shuffling through the song book like a madwoman.

"80s?" You ask, worrying your bottom lip. You have yet to meet Bill and Frank, but you know how much they mean to Joel— Even if he would rather die than admit to it.

Tess shakes her head in denial, and the relief in face is clear as day. "1971. They got new supplies coming in."

"Do you think they'll have any yarn? Joel needs new socks."

"You deserve better than this." Disappointment washes over her face. "Better than a man that is using you to replace his dead daughter."

She's wrong and you know it; Joel doesn't treat you like your father ever did, there's nothing paternal about his touches and there is no replacing Sarah. But you'd be lying if you said you never envied her for having Joel as a father, even if she is dead now; the guilt you feel must show on your face because Tess' nose wrinkles.

"Or maybe you do. Maybe the two of you deserve each other."

The tone she uses is somehow more offensive than any petname she's ever used before. But the idea of belonging so deeply to Joel that even Tess can see it warms your inside so comfortably you can't find it in yourself to be offended by the implications of her words.

The first and only time Joel comes inside of you, you've been living with him for well over a year. It's been five months since the two of you shared your first kiss, and while you've both been using your mouths and hands on each other ever since, Joel's been hesitant to be inside of you— Pulling out is risky, and condoms expired for over two decades are probably even worse, so he pushes the idea away, making you come three or four times with his mouth until you're so exhausted you stop begging him to fuck you properly.

You're already two orgasms in, sprawled nude and sweaty on the bed while Joel fucks you slowly with his fingers. He bites and sucks at your neck, a collection of bruises of varying degrees of healing peppered all over your skin. Joel pulls his fingers away from you, rubbing his cock against your cunt.

"I'm going to put just the tip." He says, his voice just a little stern as if he's scolding you before you can even misbehave.

"Yes, daddy." You nod and, although you want to beg him to just fuck you already, you're afraid he might change his mind if you seem too eager.

Joel pulls back, leaning on his haunches, pushing your knee to the side. Your legs fall open and you push yourself on your elbow, wanting to see just exactly what he's going to do— Joel is a sight to behold, his chest flush and his breathing deep, his heavy cock gripped tight in his hand. You'd been intimidated by it at first, long and impossibly thick, but Joel has fucked your mouth so many times by now that you are certain you'd be able to take him anywhere he wanted. He presses the head of his cock against your clit and you moan as it slides to the side, coated in your slick.

"She's always cryin' for her daddy." He chuckles and you clench around nothing, his rough voice hitting you deep inside. "Winkin' at me like that, begging for my cock."

"Just for you." You say, so wet you can feel it sliding down to your ass. "Want you so bad it hurts."

Joel brushes his cock against your entrance, teasing, not yet pushing inside. " 'S okay, babygirl. 'M gon' make the pain go away."

The first stretch as he pushes the fat head inside is almost too painful, your head falling back as you mewl but Joel doesn't let you go very far, the hand not holding himself steady flying to your hair, pulling you up just enough so you can see where he disappears inside of you.

"Look at ya." He commands, thighs shaking from the effort of staying still. "Stretchin' so pretty around daddy's cock."

Joel rolls his hips, pushing just another inch inside before he pulls out, a string of your slick connecting the tip of his cock to your entrance. You clench, fingers digging into the mattress to stop yourself from seeking his hips with yours. He's just as wrecked as you feel, breathing deeply before he pushes inside of you again, just a little bit further this time, but still not nearly enough. You keen and give in, planting your feet on the bed to rock against him— His cock slides halfway in before his hand pushes you back on the bed by the hip. The two of you groan in unison, both from the touch and then the abrupt lack of it. His hand comes down onto your clit, slapping it so hard you almost scream, eyes rolling to the back of its sockets.

"Oh, you like that, naughty girl?" Joel asks, and then he gives your cunt another slap. He hums when you wail, sounding almost curious about this new thing the both of you have just discovered. "If you try that again, we're done for tonight, y'hear me? You'll take what I give you or nothin' at all."

You nod, eager, wanting nothing more than for him to be inside of you again. Joel gives your clit yet another slap and the sting makes your skin warm all over.

"Yes, daddy. I'll be good." You say as he rubs soothing circles to your sensitive clit. Joel brings his cock back to you, sliding in much easier than before; he fucks you slowly, no more than just a couple of inches— Just enough to drive you crazy, your entire body set aflame at the touch that is oh-so-pleasurable but still not enough. You hold your body taut, biting down on your bottom lip to keep yourself from pushing back against him.

"Fuck, she's stranglin' me, babygirl. Never seen a pussy so tight—" Joel grunts, his body flushed red from his thick neck down to his navel, sweat dampening the hairs on his chest. "She's just suckin' me right in, isn't she?"

"She needs you." You bring a hand to your mouth, shoving two fingers between your lips and wetting them before you slide your spit-slicked fingers to your chest, rolling your nipples between them. Joel groans at the sight, loosing control of his hips just long enough to push a third of his cock inside of you. "Please daddy, it's not enough. I need to feel you deep inside of me."

You can see the moment his resolve cracks. He hikes your legs closer to his hips and then slams his entire length inside of you— It makes you wail, your mouth falling open and your back arching. Joel topples over your, pushing his index and middle finger inside of your open mouth much like you'd done just moments before. You wrap your lips around his thick fingers, humming as he shoves them as far as he can; you've learned how to control your gag reflex in the past couple of months, Joel's cock big enough to slide down your throat with a single thrust, but the way his fingers push down onto your tongue make your throat close tight.

"Suck on 'em." He orders, hips pulling back until his cock is almost entirely out before plunging back in. "I wanna see you choke on your daddy's fingers while his big cock fucks you open."

You do as he says, mainly because there isn't much else you can do other than take his commands, giving his digits the same treatment as you would his cock, licking and sucking and taking them as deep as you can. Joel's cock hits the same spot inside of you again and again and you can feel him everywhere; you moan around his fingers until he seems to take pity on you, pulling his hand away from your mouth. He shifts positions, kneeling in front of you and hiking your hips on his thighs; you only miss the weight of his body on top of yours for a second, because then Joel is pushing your knees up to your chest and the new position make you even tighter, the pressure making it seem as if his cock has doubled in size. Joel also changes the pace of his thrusts, going slower now and yet somehow even deeper, making you feel every inch of him.

"I'm gonna come." You say, the pressure building fast.

"No you won't." You blink at him, disoriented by his words. Joel pulls back, slapping your clit just as he plunges back inside. "You're goin' to be my good girl and you won't come until I let ya."

"I can't—" You say, the words cut off by the power of his thrusts. "I don't know how—"

"Yes you do." Joel hums, and he sounds almost mean as he slaps your cunt again. "Fuck, she chokes down my cock when I do that. Sweetest. Fuckin'. Pussy."

The last three words are punctuated by slap after slap, the moans falling out of your mouth becoming more and more desperate; you weren't lying, you don't know how to stop yourself from coming but you do the best you can, trying to focus on the mold spots on the ceiling or the chipped paint near the window or anything that isn't Joel's cock pushing time and time again against that perfect spot inside of you.

"Please let me come." You beg, tears pooling on the corner of your eyes and trickling down to your temples. "I can't hold it in, daddy, please. Please please please, I can't—"

Joel pinches your overstimulated clit and you gush around him, body locking up as you come against your will. It makes you black out for a second, black spots dancing in front of your eyes but Joel isn't done. He slaps your tit this time, the flesh jiggling both from the slap and the power of his thrusts.

"Such a bad girl." He grits out, slapping your breast again but he doesn't sound angry at all. "Should punish you for that. Ground you 'n' everythin'. Gotta learn to listen to your daddy."

"I'll take it." You say, gasping for air. You blink at him, the tears still blurring your eyesight. "Whatever it is, daddy, I'll take it. Anything for you."

"Maybe I'll fuck that pretty lil' ass of yours next." Joel threatens, and you clench around him. "Or maybe I'll spank you so raw you won't be able to sit. Use a belt to make sure your not comin' from my slappin' you. Naughty lil' thing, bet'cha like that, huh?"

Your heart jumps to your throat at the mention of the belt, a thousand different memories — bad, terrifying memories — of your own father and his leather belt jump to mind and your eyes well with real, uncontrollable tears.

"Anything for you." You parrot yourself, your eyes locking with the place where Joel clutched to your thighs as if you were his lifeline. "I'm yours, daddy. Anything you want, I'll take it. I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm—"

Joel's thrusts become more erratic, fast and deep and not calculated as they'd been before. He comes deep inside of you, toppling to moan against the crook of your neck, his thighs flush with your ass. It's never ending, his sloppy thrusts slowing down but not stopping as he comes and comes and comes until you feel so full to pushes into your bladder.

"Mine." He says, his voice full of wonder as his aquiline nose traces your jawline. "My precious lil' girl."

It's not an 'I love you', but you're fairly certain it's the closest you'll ever get to one.

You've been nauseated for about three weeks straight by the time Robert steals Joel and Tess' battery. Joel's been toying with the idea of leaving the QZ for good for several months now, quietly planning your escape in the late nights were sleep evades him, trading the pills and the alcohol for something ever more addictive: Hope.

You're sitting cross legged on the bed, a worn copy of a James Patterson book on your lap as Joel cleans the injuries on Tess' face. You'd been jealous of their relationship at first, unsure if they were just smuggling partners or something more but Joel never looked at Tess the way he did you, never touched her with the tenderness he did you. You forget all about the adventure Alex Cross is going through on the pages in front of you as you watch them plan their — your — escape route, the dangerous plan of going after Robert and taking back what is rightfully theirs.

"We'll be back before sundown." Joel tells you, and then he waits for Tess to leave the apartment before he leans in for a kiss. "Get our bags ready, we leave tonight."

You nod, already missing his touch by the time he crosses the threshold after his partner.

It's pouring rain outside by the time they come back, and you've spent most of the day pacing around the cramped apartment. Your backpacks are ready to go, everything of value stuffed inside of it, but you keep checking and rechecking all of the nooks and crannies of the apartment, making sure you've taken everything out of every secret compartment that Joel has hidden around the place. You had been scared the first time Joel brought up the idea of crossing the country after his brother, terrified really, but you'd rather face the monsters — both human and not — outside of the QZ than stay behind without him.

In the months after that, the idea has grown on you, and now you can't wait to see what it is outside; you've seen the top of skyscrapers from the roof of some of the taller buildings inside the walls, and you've heard all of the tales, but seeing it with your own eyes seems like the most exciting thing to ever happen in your sad life.

Joel looks exhausted by the time he comes back, wet from the rain with Tess and a young girl in tow. You frown at her, and she reciprocates the gesture.

"Who are you?" You ask.

"Who are you?" She retorts, dropping her sopping backpack on the ground.

"Joel's wife." You don't even hesitate, the words you've been mulling inside of your head for weeks now falling naturally from your lips. Out of the corner of your eye you see Joel freeze, and Tess' head snaps towards you so harshly you think she might break her neck.

The girl squints. "Aren't you a little yo—"

"We had a change of plans." Joel interrupts the girl, dropping down heavily onto the couch. "Robert fucked us over, his battery was no good. Tess and I are takin' the girl to the Fireflies, and then we'll come back to get you."

"You don't smuggle people." You say, your heart dropping down to your stomach. Joel's able to get in and out of the QZ with relative ease because of the goods he brings for the soldiers, but smuggling a person — a child — out of the zone isn't something the soldier will easily turn a blind eye to.

"We do now." Tess is the one that replies. She exchanges a heavy look with Joel before sneaking out of the apartment, the door slamming in her wake.

"Joel." You say, sitting next to him. You see the girl look at you wearily before she starts roaming around the room, her fingers touching every little thing she could. "This isn't right. What do the Fireflies want with a child?"

"She's some bigwig's daughter or somethin'. Marlene is desperate, she's givin' us all we need to get to Wyoming."

"What's in Wyoming?" The girl asks.

"None of your business." Joel grits out, though his face remains turned to you. "It's too dangerous to take you with me but if Marlene does good on her promise, we're set, baby."

"And if she doesn't?"

"Then I'll come back home and we'll try again." He promises. "The girl is just another cargo, this is the same run I always do. The payout's just a hundred times' better."

You bite the corner of your thumb. This feels too reminiscent of your father's last smuggle run, a goodbye that doesn't seem final but feels like it— Like there's more, like Joel isn't telling you everything or perhaps making things seem less dangerous than they are. You nod, eventually, stomach still in knots.

Joel looks like he wants to reach for you, but one look at the girl makes him retreat; she's not even pretending not to stare, curled on the reclining chair and looking intently at the two of you.

"I'll talk to Abe. He knows how to contact Tommy— If I'm not back in ten days you're goin' to head to Abe's and tell him I sent ya. Hey, kid— Listen to me, this is important."

You nod, trying to focus on what he's saying. He watches you for a moment, making sure he has all of your attention before continuing: "If I'm not back in ten days, you're going to send a message to Tommy and tell him to meet you in Lincoln."

"Joel, how the fuck am I supposed to get to Lincoln on my own?"

"You're goin' to play an 80s song on the radio, and then you'll leave it playin' as you leave. Bill is goin' to meet you halfway there but you need to get out of the city first." He pulls your chin towards him, holding your face so he can look you in the eyes. "You have to get out of the city as fast as you can, y'hear me? You're goin' to follow the path on the map I'ma leave with you, and you're goin' to meet up with Bill. He's gon' keep you until Tommy gets there."

"You've never walked me through a contingency plan like this before, Joel." You try to blink the tears away. "If this is just like any other run, then I don't need this."

"Well, you never called yourself m'wife before, now have you?" Despite the call out, Joel has a small grin on his lips. You feel your face heat up with embarrassment, and you shrug.

"Tess calls me your housewife all the time."

Joel drops his hand, his eyes darting towards the young girl in the room as if he's just recalled her presence. "This is all hypothetical. This run is more dangerous than others, but I've survived worst. I been meanin' to tell you all'a this for a while now. Ain't gon' leave you on your own like your dad did."

Joel leaves an annotated map on the kitchen table— The same one he's been doodling over ever since he heard Tommy was in Wyoming, with escape routes from Boston and the safest and quickest ways to get to Tommy, the margins filled with extensive notes about the unsafe routes and places to avoid in the city; things are numbered and signed and there's a whole paragraph of symbols and codes Joel's come up with, the sort of detailed attention that means he's been working on this for far longer than you've noticed.

"How do I sneak out of the QZ?" You ask, staring at the map as if it's a bomb.

"James."

"The Jesus freak?" You frown. James lives a few doors down from you, a creepy-looking blond man that often has a bible in his hands and a superiority complex that makes you want to barf.

"He's cheap, and he knows his way 'round the place. There are two guns underneath the fourth floorboard by the wardrobe, you'll trade him one and keep one to yourself."

"Hypothetically."

"Yes, darlin'. Hypothetically. Only if I don't come back."

"You'll be here in ten days, won't you?"

"I will. Maybe even sooner than that." Joel promises again, holding your gaze steady. Still, you don't believe him. "I'll be here with a truckload of supplies, and then we'll skip town together."

They leave not long after that, a few hours short of sun up by the time Tess comes back with her pack and a clear exit for the three of them. Joel doesn't give you a prolonged goodbye, simply squeezing your waist and kissing the top of your head like he always does, but the terrible gut feeling that this run is unlike the others doesn't leave with him— If anything, it only seems to worsen in the dark, empty apartment.

You cry yourself to sleep and, distracted by your own anguish and the loud sound of your sobbing, you don't hear the song coming from Tess' radio.

The ten days are an absolute nightmare. You're sick most of the time, sleeping when you're not puking and crying when you're not sleeping or puking— It is Amelia, the young woman that manages the food bank closes to your apartment that brings up the possibility of you being pregnant; she catches you retching one morning outside of her food stall after a particularly strong waft of freshly baked bread, connecting the dots even before you can properly explain your symptoms; you have no proper way of confirming her hypothesis, not unless you want to go to a FEDRA-appointed doctor and alert them to your condition, so Amelia takes you into the backroom of her stall and offers you two different options: A ginger root for morning sickness, or a mugwort and pennyroyal concoction to make your problem go away.

You take the ginger root with shaking fingers, and Amelia simply holds you in silence while you cry.

When the ten days come and go with no sign of Joel, the dread settles so heavy it keeps you awake all night, and not even the bone-deep tiredness you've been feeling can make you get a wink of sleep. You give him some wiggle room, however, deciding to wait just a little longer before you contact Tommy— Joel is coming home any day, you're certain of it, and you'd feel silly to make a fuss just for him to walk through the door safe and sound. So you cry, and you vomit and you don't sleep and you wait.

For all of the despair you felt when you father went missing, you discover now that you never worried much about his safety— You worried that if he wasn't safe you wouldn't be as well, but it takes Joel leaving for you to understand the difference between worrying about someone to worrying about what will happen to you now that they're gone. A thousand different scenarios play through your head, from raiders to slavers to infected hoards to the fact that, maybe, he had simply left you behind: You're not certain which one hurts more, the idea of him being dead somewhere or the idea of him being alive without you.

You hold out hope for as long as you can but, by the fifteenth day, you know you can't pretend nothing happened anymore. You go to Abe early one morning, when the line is just starting to form and tells him exactly as you were instructed to: That you are Joel Miller's wife — which raises eyebrows from everyone in the room — and that you need his help. You give the codeword for Bill and Frank's home, and your estimated arrival there and, by the time Abe is done scribbling all of it down, you feel a little better about yourself; it's scary, and dangerous, but you've lived through scary and dangerous your entire life— And perhaps you haven't faced the outside before, but you've lived in a free-for-all war zone ever since you were a kid.

James isn't an easy man to find, but eventually you manage to track him down to an old building that is being used as a chapel— It's an old coffee shop that's been cleared out at some point, a few mismatching chairs stacked neatly in small rows. James gives you a warm smile when you walk in, your backpack clutched tightly to your chest, but it's visible that he doesn't recognize you.

"Joel sent me." You tell him. "Miller."

The smile slides off of James' face, and he takes a moment to regain his bearings; and despite being used to bad reactions when it comes to dropping Joel's name, the clear dislike on the man's face only increases your worries. James takes you to a backroom behind the church that he's assembled into something that might pass for an office, arms crossed over his chest— He's tall and lanky, non-threatening for most people but there's something about him that keeps you on your toes.

"I need out of the QZ." You explain, plucking the handgun from your backpack before offering it to him. "Joel said you'd help me in exchange of this."

The man squints, but eventually takes the weapon from you, carefully examining it before he puts it on top of the worn Bible on his desk. "Where are you headed?"

"Wyoming." The word slips out, and you wince, unsure if you're supposed to tell him or not— Joel certainly wouldn't have shared anything more than strictly necessary. "That's none of your concern, though. I just need your help to get past the soldiers."

"I got family on the Wyoming border, I've been meaning to head there. What part of Wyoming are you going?"

"I don't have anything else to pay you for chaperoning me. I can get there on my own, I just—"

"I just said I'm headed there anyways." James smiles, his fingers interlaced in front of him. "Do you know how to shoot? It's a rough path, I could use someone to help me."

You hesitate for a long moment, but James doesn't seem to be in any rush. You don't trust him, not one bit, but your mind goes back to the life you might be carrying, to the fact that you had no guarantee that either Tommy or Bill would get your message or even believe you at all; you had someone else to think about now, the fragile little thing you had growing inside of you— You still had no proof you were pregnant, but you knew it to be true. Could feel it deep in your soul, as if your body had been warning you about it before your brain caught up to the possibility of it.

You pluck Joel's map from your backpack, pointing it to the general area Tommy is. "I need to go here. Somewhere."

James hums, and nods. "My community is in Colorado, but it's close enough to that area. A couple of weeks on foot, less if we can get a car."

"Why are you so far away from home?"

He taps two fingers on the Bible. "Spreading the Lord's words."

You have to bite your tongue to keep yourself from snorting. "I don't believe you when you say you don't want anything from me. Nobody does anything without payment."

"The Lord teaches us to be selfless, and help those in need. A young woman like you, crossing the country by yourself? You'll die before you cross state lines."

"Your community. Where is it?"

"Here." James points to the map. "It is close enough to the place you're going, Joel might even be at Silver Lake rather than Wyoming by this point. We're a very welcoming bunch."

You open your mouth to say you're not after Joel, but decide against it; James doesn't need to know why you're going and, maybe if he's scared enough of Joel, he might think twice before bringing you any sort of harm.

"Alright." You say, shoving the map back into your backpack. "Take me to Silver Lake, then."

Bucky Barnes never expected to find himself in a relationship—not anytime soon, and perhaps not even in this lifetime. That is, until he met you, and then he fell in love without even understanding the true meaning of it.

Every day for Bucky before you was a life he didn’t truly live. He walked every day following the same routine, spoke consistently to the same few people (Sam and the old man who worked as the grocery clerk), and some days, he would go by without uttering a single word.

He thought he was fine with this life. But after meeting you, he didn’t want to live his life any other way.

You were his complete opposite, in every good way possible.

You filled his quiet moments with long, rambling strings of words.

Bucky lay sprawled out on the couch, the size of his body swallowing the damn space. He picked up a book that he had intended to actually read, but the moment he settled on the couch and you tugged lightly at his sleeve, guiding his head into your lap, all intentions dissolved.

He wasn’t reading.

Your fingers slipped into his hair, threading through the soft, long strands that you love. Bucky let out a slow breath, the quiet exhales that only ever came out when he was around you. His eyes fluttered shut, taking in your presence and touch as he felt his whole body sink deeper into the cushions—into you.

Meanwhile, you were on your third tangent of the day.

“… and honestly, the basil looked fine, but the woman at the store kept telling me that it was spoiled—which, by the way, I don’t think it was—and besides, if it was spoiled, why the hell would they keep it in the stores?”

He turned the page of his book, eyes unfocused and not absorbing a single word printed on it. The only thing he absorbed was the sound of your voice—warm, animated, and very familiar.

He loved this. He loved you like this. The way your thoughts raced, the way your hands idly played with the ends of his hair. The way you never expected him to fill the silence—the way you let him simply exist.

Most people talked at him—always staring at him weirdly if he took a second too long to respond. But you talked to him. Around him. With him. Like you wanted him there, even if he stayed quiet the whole time.

“—and then I realized the reason the oven wasn’t heating was because I never actually turned it on, which is kind of embarrassing, because I was starting to get pissed off. I wanted dinner to be ready by the time you got home—”

A quiet hum escaped him, low in his chest, not mocking but acknowledging. Encouraging you to keep going, to keep rambling, to keep being you.

Your fingers paused for a brief second. “Are you even listening?”

Bucky tilted his head slightly, turning his cheek against your thigh, the stubble grazing against your leg and making it tickle, just so he could look up at you. His eyes were half-lidded, so soft that it melted you.

You loved this. You loved seeing your boyfriend—usually gruff and grumpy—so soft and smitten with you. His body lying defenseless and lazily over yours in his soft cotton pajamas, his long dark hair sprawled messily over your thighs.

And what you loved especially, was that he was only this soft with you.

“I’m listening,” he murmured tiredly. “I like hearing you talk.”

You couldn’t help but smile, looking down at him. “You do?” you teased.

“Mm.” He hummed, closing his eyes again, letting your hand resume its gentle strokes.

“Then why do you still have that book in your hands?”

You pulled him out of his comfort zone by taking him to a dive bar.

He never expected to find himself in places like that. Bars meant loud noises and suspicious crowds. He would never go there himself—at least, not willingly.

When you told him you wanted him to meet some of your friends, he stiffened almost immediately—an involuntary pull back into himself. His shoulders tensed, his jaw clenching, and that same bitter, glaring look he always had that he was too bad at hiding.

“Baby,” he had muttered. “Bars aren’t really my thing.”

And you had smiled, soft and warm, as if you already knew he would say that, and he truly had no way out. “I know. But this one’s small and low-key. These people mean a lot to me, and I want them to meet the person who means the most to me.”

And just like that, he was doomed.

He’d go anywhere if you looked at him like that.

So now, here he was, standing outside the weather-worn door of a dingy dive, a neon sign flickering above him. He was just about ready to grab your hand and drag you back home himself.

But the minute he stepped inside, he hovered at the entrance, taking everything in.

It wasn’t as loud as he expected it to be; just a comfortable sound of conversation. The place smelled like wood polish, cigarettes, and good beer. A jukebox in the corner played—he didn’t recognize the song, but he liked the beat of it.

The wooden floors creaked under his boots—and when he heard people laugh, he stiffened up.

Were they laughing at him?

But as always, as if you read his thoughts, you wrapped an arm around his bicep, giving it a light squeeze through his leather jacket, batting your lashes at him cutely as you offered your comforting words.

“You’ll be okay,” you reassured softly. “I’m right here.”

When you introduced him to your friends—he expected weird glances and stares, and he was fully prepared to back out. But instead, they just… talked to him. They didn’t tiptoe around him like he was fragile glass or a ticking bomb. They didn’t question him about his past. They didn’t stare at the metal peeking through the sleeve his jacket.

They just accepted him.

A couple of guys at the bar even pulled him into a conversation about simple stuff. Work. Music. A new pool table the owner blew half his savings on.

“You shoot?” one of them asked.

Bucky hesitated only for a second before shrugging. “Not really.”

But they pulled him in and started playing anyway. And to your surprise—he played well. One of the guys whistled with a beer in hand. “Hot damn, boy. You hustling us?”

Bucky shook his head, leaning against the table. “Nah,” he said. “Just lucky.”

You watched from the side, chin resting on your hand, absolutely smitten with him. He pretended he didn’t notice—though he very much did. If going to a bar and being half-decent at billiards was enough to impress you and make you stare at him like that, then he wouldn’t mind being here every week.

For the first time in a long time, Bucky let himself enjoy something that wasn’t quiet or predictable. He liked the low lights, he liked the music, and he liked the sound of your laughter mixing with everyone else’s.

But then, of course, something had to go sideways.

You were just stepping away from the booth to grab a drink when someone slid in your path. Some young guy—too confident and way too damn handsy—leaned in a little too close, an unflattering grin stretching wide. No charisma, no charm, just straight up creepy.

“Hey there,” the guy said. “Didn’t think someone as pretty as you belonged in a place like this.”

You stiffened. “I’m just getting a drink.”

“Yeah? You want one on me?”

“No, thanks—”

Before you could take another step, a sharp crack sliced clean through the room. It was loud enough to silence a few nearby conversations.

Half the bar turned toward the pool table, and Bucky stood there—completely stone cold still, holding one half of the billiards cue he’d just snapped clean in half, staring down at you and the man who dared to approach you.

“Hey,” the bartender spoke up. “You need to pay for that.”

But his words were left unanswered. Bucky dropped the broken cue on the table, then he started walking towards you.

You turned to face the man with a wary look. “You should go—”

The poor man barely had time to register your warning before a big, familiar broody shadow swallowed the space beside you.

Bucky stepped between you, his expression unreadable with a slight crease between his brow. His presence alone was enough to make the guy stumble one step back slightly.

“What’s your problem, man?” the guy scoffed, though the wobble in his voice betrayed him.

Bucky didn’t react. With the height difference, he had to lean down—and spoke quietly yet sternly. “She told you no.”

The guy swallowed hard, suddenly unable to maintain eye contact with the brooding ex-soldier in front of him. No one in the bar spoke, and your friends gave each other worried glances as they watched from a distance.

Bucky tilted his head slightly, his posture creepily still. “You hear me?”

“Hey, man, I wasn’t— I wasn’t trying anything,” the guy stammered.

“You’re gonna walk away,” Bucky murmured. “Right now. And you’re never gonna talk to her again. Understand?”

The man bobbed his head quickly. “Yeah—yeah, okay.” He practically tripped over his own feet trying to get away, pushing through the small crowd that formed near the exit. Only when he disappeared out the doors did Bucky's shoulders loosen.

He turned to you finally, his eyes scanning you up and down, checking for anything wrong—even though nothing had happened. His voice dropped, soft and worried.

“You alright, sweetheart?” he raised a hand, gently caressing your cheek.

You nodded, still trying to bite back a grin from the sudden shift. “Yeah. I’m okay. I could’ve handled that, you know?”

A crooked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—smug and sarcastic, his signature look.

“Sure you could’ve,” he teased. His thumb brushed over your cheekbone one last time before he dropped his hand and laced his fingers with yours. “Come on.”

He tugged you gently towards the pool table, the tension in the room still robust. Half the bar was still staring—either impressed, terrified, or trying very hard to pretend they hadn’t witnessed the casual destruction of bar property.

Bucky, of course, was completely oblivious.

“Play billiards with me,” he said, grabbing a new cue off the wall like he hadn’t just snapped the last one in half. “I’m starting to get the hang of this thing.”

You snorted, following behind him. “Oh, are you?”

“Mhm,” he chalked the cue with that same smug little grin. “A couple more games and I might be a regular here.”

You raised a brow, gesturing subtly around the room—the wide eyes, the whispering, and the bartender glaring him down for breaking his cue.

“Well,” you drawled. “That is… if you don’t get kicked out.”

You started to take over his silent days with music. Good, loud music.

Back in the forties, Glenn Miller was everywhere. Doris Day was everyone's favorite. The soft, and “vintage” sounds brought him comfort. Sam would suggest listening to other songs—Marvin Gaye. He was fond of that. But he’d always return to the comfort and familiarity of swing music.

That is, until you were showering and blasting songs from the speaker, and he found himself nodding his head to the beat.

When you got out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around your body and the mirrors fogged over, he opened the bathroom door without knocking.

“What was that song you were playing?” he asked bluntly.

You raised your brow, facing the mirror as you squeezed toothpaste onto your toothbrush. “Which one?”

He shrugged. “All of them.”

“Oh, um—” you paused. “Green Day. Alice in Chains. Foo Fighters. Creed.” You waved your hand, gesturing vaguely. Then you turned to face him with a small grin. “You like that kind of music?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “They played music like this at the bar we went to. It’s nice.” He said this casually, as if it didn't matter all that much. But to you, it mattered a lot. In the time you’d been dating Bucky, you knew he only stuck with what he knew and what he was comfortable with—very rarely stepping outside of his comfort zone.

So to hear him get enthusiastic over something as small as music, it made you happy.

“Cool. I’ll send you my playlist, then.”

Later that evening, he was playing your playlist on the speaker, even finding new songs to add. When you came home from work, he was already in the living room, vacuuming the large rug.

You smiled sweetly at him, taking your jacket off. “Growing fond of Dad rock, I see.”

He paused the vacuum, lifting his head to look at you with a confused expression. “Dad rock?”

You snorted, dropping your bag by the door as you walked toward him. “Yeah, Dad rock. Y’know—old man music? Classic rock. Stuff middle-aged guys would listen to.”

Bucky blinked, turning the vacuum off. “Wait. Old man?”

You bit back a laugh. “Dad rock is, like… nostalgic, gritty, kind of aggressive but in a lovable way. Basically, music made for men who complain about their backs and say things like, ‘They don't make ‘em like they used to.’”

He made a face. “I don't say that.”

“No,” you chuckled, resting your hand on his strong chest. “But you do complain about your back.”

He considered it for a moment, pressing his lips together. “I guess,” then he ran a hand down the stubble on his chin. “But can we circle back to the ‘old man’ part?” He hesitated for a second. “Do I… give off the energy of someone who’s old?”

You pulled away slightly to meet his eyes, your brow raised. “What are you getting at, Buck?”

“I guess what I’m trying to ask is—do I… seem old?” He ran a hand through his long hair, pushing it back as if trying to make himself look more presentable. “And do… I look old?”

You blinked at him, thrown off guard by his question. It’s not often that your boyfriend expresses his insecurity—and when he does, he does it in subtle ways like this. And every single time, you’re there to reassure him. Your face softened, and your teasing evaporated as you cupped his jaw, feeling the rough scratch of his stubble beneath your palm.

“Bucky,” you said quietly, tilting his face towards yours. “Look at me.”

His blue eyes flickered to yours, eyes narrowed yet his gaze was soft and gentle, and that look alone was enough to make your body feel warm.

“You don’t look old,” you started, letting your thumb graze the corner of his mouth. “You look… distinguished.”

His brows furrowed, and the nicely-aged, grumpy crease between them only made the warmth between your legs flutter and pulse.

“That’s what people say when someone looks old,” he grumbled.

“Okay,” you corrected, sliding your hand down the column of his throat, to his collarbones, fingers tracing the firm lines of muscle. “Then let me try again.”

You tugged slightly on the collar of his henley, pulling him closer until your bodies brushed, until your chest was pressed up against his firm, solid one. “You look strong… and big,” you murmured. “Handsome.” Your hand traveled lower, fingertips brushing teasingly down against his shirt, and down to the edge of his belt. “And incredibly unfairly attractive for someone who’s spending too much time worried about being old.”

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“And I know for a fact—” you added, your fingers slipping into the hair at the nape of his neck, giving it a gentle tug that made his breath hitch, “—you don’t fuck like an old man.”

He grunted, a rumbling sound that vibrated from his throat. “No?”

And with that, he would remind you just how strong and big he really was. His rough hands would find your waist—one hand warm and calloused, the other cold and hard—the contrast only making your body shiver in anticipation every time he held you.

He would hold you tight against his hard body and drive into you toward the closest flat surface possible. Whether it was the couch, the floor, the kitchen table, the bed, or against a wall—it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the feel of your warm cunt wrapped tight around his cock, your pussy jerking him off until he filled it with his cum.

And he was big—so big that it was almost painful. As much as he wanted to slam all the way in, he knew how important it was to ease into it. He would push in slowly at first, the stretch burning deliciously as he offered you encouraging words to take him deeper. “That's it,” he would coo. “Good girl—just like that. Gonna go a little deeper, okay? You can take it. You always do.”

His hands roamed eagerly all over your body, pulling, kneading, spanking, and pinching—anything to feel your warmth and to elicit a sound out of you. He was always sloppy with his mouth, pressing soft kisses all over your neck and chest, licking and lapping at your nipples until you were left a sensitive, writhing mess beneath him.

He rarely spoke—he mainly grunted and moaned above you, “Fuck, baby,” or “My God—fuck,” curses slipping under his breath every time he drove deep and hit a spot just right. But the times he got too into it—to the point where he’d start rutting into you uncontrollably like an animal—he wouldn’t hold back with his words.

A litany of filthy, disgusting words left his mouth as he hiked your legs over his shoulder, his hips rocking and the bed frame creaking as your wet, warm pussy hugged his pulsing shaft.

“Come on, sweetheart. Take my fucking cock—you can take it,” he groaned, his hands tight around your waist. “Goddamn, shit, gonna have to…” he’d thrust hard, “fill this… oh fuck, fill you up with cum—fuck, baby.”

And then he would do exactly that. He would fill you to the brim, keeping you stuffed full until you were trembling and panting in his arms, coming down from your high.

But the time after sex was the best part. Bucky would hold you tight against his bare chest, kissing your sweaty temple softly with a bunch of muttered and sleepy “I love yous” as his hands gently grazed your back.

He was always so warm and so big, and there was no better feeling than lying right beside him, your eyes fluttering shut as you took in his warmth, the stubble on his chin grazing against your temple, and the masculine scent of him.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he’d always ask you right after sex.

“Never.”

You taught him how to be patient and understanding.

You were already wincing when the front door of the house opened. Not because you’d done anything wrong, exactly—but because the tiny white fluffball currently curled in your lap was now residing in your shared home.

Without Bucky's permission.

He stepped inside, shrugging off his jacket. “Hey, doll. Sorry I’m late, traffic was—” he paused, kicking off his boots and taking a deep inhale. “What’s that... smell?”

You froze, and just as you were about to reply, the kitten chose this moment, of course, to poke her little head out, blue eyes blinking innocently.

Bucky stared back at her, and you offered the most awkward smile. “… surprise?”

He opened his mouth, shut it, pointed a finger, then opened his mouth again. “What is that?”

“A cat,” you said, frowning slightly.

“I can see that,” he replied, his expression stoic and his voice stern. “Why is it here?”

“She needed a home,” you corrected, your hand coming up to softly pet her head. “I was running some errands and I stopped by the shelter—for, um, no reason in particular. The shelter was full, and she looked so sad and lonely, and I thought—”

“—so you brought her here,” he finished, giving you a displeased look as if he were a disappointed father. “Without telling me.”

“She’s small,” you tried. “Barely takes up space. Like—like a sock.”

The white cat yawned, tiny and squeaky. Bucky’s eye twitched as if he were annoyed.

You gently lifted her out of your lap and held her up. “Just look at her.”

“I don’t do well with animals. You know that,” he said, crossing his arms. Grumpy. Very grumpy. “I’m not taking care of her,” he warned. “I’m not feeding her, or walking her, or—”

“She’s a cat, Buck. You don’t walk cats.”

Instead of rolling his eyes like he normally would, he exhaled sharply—that disappointed, discontented sigh that he rarely makes, but when he does, you can’t help but feel small and fragile. He dragged a hand through his hair, as if you were only adding more stress to his day.

“Still,” he muttered, his voice tight. “You can’t just—just decide these things and not tell me. I come home and there’s… there’s a whole animal in the house.”

He gestured vaguely at the cat, who blinked up at him, delighted by the small movement.

Your smile faltered just slightly. “Bucky, I… I didn’t think you’d be this upset. I thought you might be surprised, but—”

“It’s not—” he cut himself off, jaw clenching hard. He looked exhausted, trying to find the right words to say. “I had a long day. A really long day. And now there’s this…” his eyes flickered to the cat then back to you, “… thing that I could potentially fuck up.”

“Bucky—”

“I can barely keep myself together some days,” he muttered. “And now I’m supposed to be okay with having something small and breakable running around?”

“She’s my responsibility, Bucky,” you said gently. “I brought her in not expecting you to help out—”

“That’s also what I don’t like,” his voice grew slightly louder, making you shrink back on the couch. “We’re a team, aren’t we? That’s what you always say—then you bring home this cat and suddenly she’s your responsibility and your responsibility only. I don’t like that.”

You sat up straighter, heart beating anxiously. “Bucky… that’s not what I meant. I just didn’t want to put pressure on you, that’s all—”

He shook his head. “No. Stop. I just… I just need a minute,” he said quietly—not angry, just worn out. “I’m going to the other room.”

You bit your bottom lip, frowning as you looked down at the cat with pitiful eyes. “Sorry, baby,” you cooed. “He just needs some time.”

Later that week, Bucky hadn’t been interacting with you or the cat much, and your mind was circling in all the wrong places.

Every time he got upset, he’d always distance himself. He distanced himself to the point it became worrisome—always needing time for himself, not finding the right words to say to make it worse. And every time, you were left alone, waiting for him to come back when he was ready.

But eventually, over the course of the past few days, you would hear Bucky interacting with the cat—but not in ways that you expected.

“Stop biting my shoelaces.”

“You scratched me!”

“Stop meowing at me. I don’t know what you want.”

“Can it, cat. This food isn’t for you.”

You’d thought about bringing the kitten to a new shelter, but every time you looked at her soft little face, you were determined to make it work—with or without Bucky’s approval. You’d been trying to find names for the new cat—Snowball, Luna, Frost—but none of them worked.

You were passing the living room with a basket of laundry when you heard low, soft, and almost playful murmurs. Curious, you took a peek around the corner.

Bucky was on the floor, legs crossed, his metal hand held up like a perch. The cat was balancing delicately on his knee, batting a paw at one of his fingers while he moved it slowly, letting her catch it every time.

And he was smiling.

Not a big, overly excited smile—just that small, rare curve you only ever caught during intimate, slow moments or when he was looking at you when you thought he didn’t notice.

“There you go,” he murmured. “Get it, little Alpine.”

Your heart skipped a beat, and you nearly dropped the laundry basket altogether. Suddenly, the tension from the mishap that happened earlier in the week evaporated, and the only thing you could pay attention to right now was the cat chirping triumphantly and pouncing onto his metal wrist. Bucky let out a soft huff of genuine and warm laughter.

You leaned against the doorway. “Alpine, huh?”

Bucky froze, but the cat kept pouncing on his hand. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder at you, his ears turning pink. “I—uh, I was just…” He cleared his throat. “She was all by herself in the room and—I don’t know. Do you like it?”

You pushed off the doorframe and walked closer, setting the laundry basket down softly. The kitten momentarily stopped batting her paw just to watch you approach.

“I love it,” you whispered, your voice suddenly shaky with emotion. You knelt beside him, gently running your finger down the white fur on the kitten's back. “It’s perfect, Bucky.” You smiled, keeping your eyes down on Alpine.

Bucky didn’t say for a moment. You could feel his eyes on you, but you kept your focus on Alpine's tiny frame, half-curled against him like she was always meant to be there, with him. When you finally looked up, he was already looking back at you.

His gaze softened, and his smile faltered slightly—hesitant and fragile. You looked away again, keeping your eyes down at Alpine—because by keeping eye contact, it would only pressure him to say things he might not know what or how to say.

“Hey,” he murmured gently. “Look at me for a second.”

You hesitated, but then you looked up.

He pressed his lips together, the gears in his head turning as he tried to figure out what to say. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “For the other night. For… everything I said—or didn’t say. I wasn’t mad at you… I was just…” He let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “I was scared and tired—but mostly scared.” He frowned. “I’ve never taken care of an animal before. This is all new to me. I don’t like new things.”

You leaned in a little closer, your knee brushing against his.

“It’s okay. You’re doing fine,” you whispered. “More than fine.” He didn’t argue, but he didn’t quite believe you either—you could see it in the way his shoulders stayed tense, like he was just waiting to mess up.

You reached out, letting your fingers lightly brush against his thigh. “Bucky… you don’t have to know everything right away. Taking care of something—or someone—it’s not about being perfect. It’s about being patient.”

You nodded towards the little animal balancing on his other leg. “Look at her. She already trusts you. She’s not waiting for you to be perfect.”

He stared down at Alpine, who stretched against his hand like she had no doubt who would protect her—because that was the energy Bucky gave off. He wasn’t great with words, he was never good at expressing himself—and even that was okay. Because without a doubt, he loved you. He loved hard, and he showed it in more ways than one.

This was one of them.

He looked at you through his lashes. “Do you… like the name?” he asked again quietly, as if he might take the name back if you hesitated even a second. Your heart warmed at the vulnerability woven into those five little words—the way he asked like he genuinely hoped you did, like your approval meant more to him than he could ever fully say.

“I love it, Bucky,” you whispered. “That means we get to keep her?”

His fingers stroked Alpine’s fur with an instinctive gentleness, the same way he would caress your back or hair. “Yeah,” he said, almost bashful. “She’s ours.”

“Good,” you sighed softly. “Because I had no plans of putting her back in the shelter.”

He chuckled quietly, and you leaned your head against his hard shoulder, letting the vulnerable moment envelop the three of you like a comfy warm blanket. Alpine purred quietly between you, a tiny ball of white soft fluff curled comfortably and safely in Bucky’s hands.

Because that’s what dating Bucky Barnes always felt like.

And to Bucky, that’s what dating you felt like.

Comfortable, soft, and safe.

thank you for reading <3