Page 74 of Your Place or Mine

The words echoed in the empty hallway.

It wasn’t about Callum. Not really. It was everything. The building. The responsibility. The loneliness that clung to the edges of every accomplishment. The fear that I was failing her…that I was taking everything she’d left me and spinning it into a disaster.

“I wish you were here,” I said quietly.

And then, for the first time in weeks, I cried.

Not just a few tears. Not a tight-throated blink-it-away moment. Full, body-shaking sobs that came from somewhere deep inside. The kind of grief that doesn’t ask for permission. That justtakes.

I cried for the nights I used to come home and find her sitting at the kitchen table with a tea bag steeping in lukewarm water and a magazine she’d never finish. I cried for the way she used to hum while folding laundry. For the voicemail, I’d played a hundred times before accidentally deleting it. For the way she’d believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

For the fact that she wasn’t here to see any of this.

The paint, the building, the apartment—the tiny threads of life I was trying to stitch together again.

She would’ve loved it here.

She would’ve had the whole town wrapped around her finger by now. Would’ve started a knitting group or a breakfast club. Would’ve flirted shamelessly with the butcher, offered unsolicited advice to Riley, and told Callum to knock off the brooding, or she’d hit him with a rolling pin.

I laughed through a sob.

It hurt.

God, ithurt.

But once the tears came, I didn’t stop them.

I let myself fall apart, because I hadn’t yet.

Not really.

Not since the funeral.

Not since I’d stood in front of the mirror in a black dress that didn’t fit right and told myself to be strong, to be calm, to smile when people said she was in a better place.

I’d carried that strength into this move.

Into this town.

Into every interaction with a man who wanted to pretend I didn’t belong here.

But tonight, I wasn’t strong.

I was just a daughter who missed her mother so much that it felt like her ribs were cracking open.

When the sobs finally slowed, I wiped my cheeks with the edge of my sleeve and leaned back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.

My throat ached. My eyes burned. But I felt… lighter, like something had shifted. Not healed, but released.

She wasn’t here.

But I was.

And maybe that counted for something.

I took a breath. Another.

Then I reached for the roller again.

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