Page 115 of The Space Between
My feet move before I tell them to. I head straight to her door.
I knock once. Twice. Then, the door opens and there she is—hair in a messy braid, wearing one of those soft cotton tank topsthat clings to her chest in ways that make my chest too tight, and my mouth feel like I chewed on a cattail.
It’s her eyes that stop me. Those fucking eyes. They’re soft as though she sees right through me… like she’sbeenseeing me when everyone else has done what I’ve made them do and looked right past. It fucking undoes me. She undoes me.
“Hi,” she whispers.
I swallow hard and grunt, “Can I come in?”
In answer, she steps aside.
The second the door shuts, I’m breathing her in. Vanilla. Books. A little river water and a lot of something that’s justBlakelyn.
Fuck me, but I want to drown in it.
Drown in her.
“Thanks for the flower,” she says after a beat, leaning against the counter. Her voice is quiet. Honest.
“I didn’t know if you’d…” I shake my head. “Didn’t know what the hell I was doing, if I’m honest.”
Her lips tilt up and my whole world spins. “You didn’t have to say anything. That said enough.”
I look at her. Reallylook.And it hits me—how long it’s been since someone looked back at me like this.
Like I wasn’t just wreckage on a riverbank.
Like I’m stillworth something.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” I admit, voice low. “That I’m still here.”
“You did….with your note… and the fact that you stayed through the night.” She whispers.
Silence fills the space between us, but it’s not tense. It’s waiting. For me. For this.
“I still think about Molly every day,” I say quietly. “Still… even now. Even… with you. Aubree, too. Sometimes I swear Ihear her laugh, or Molly humming in the kitchen. I don’t want to forget them. Ican’t.But with you…”
Blakelyn sighs. “You shouldn’t forget them, Gruene. I don’twantyou to forget them. I’d never ask that of you,” she says. “Remembering them, preserving their memory… that’s important. Youlovedthem. You still love them, and you should. You always will but that doesn’t mean you can’t make room.” Her hand lightly brushes against mine and I freeze.
“Room for what?” I rasp.
She takes a deep breath and stares at me. “For something new. Something alive.Someonealive.”
I close my eyes.
I want to believe her.
God, I do.
But I don’t know how.
“I’m not whole,” I mutter.
“You don’t have to be.” She calmly replies. “I’m broken, too, Gruene. You know that.”
I look down. Her fingers are threaded through mine and I don’t want to pull away.
I don’t.
