Page 12 of The Space Between
My wife and my daughter.
Five words. No elaboration. No dramatics. He didn’t ask for pity. I don’t think he wants that. I don’t think he meant to tell me at all. It was just a brutal kind of truth that settled between us like dust on old wood.
And the worst part is, I don’t know what to do with it.
I didn’t cry though I wanted to. I didn’t hug him. I didn’t even say I was sorry. I don’t think he would have wanted me to.
I just sat there and touched the back of his hand. So still. So quiet. My chest aching. I wanted to say a thousand things, but I don’t know if any of them would matter.
What do I say? How do you comfort someone who suffers that kind of loss?
So, I said nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I didn’t want to make it worse.
I didn’t trust myself not to cross some invisible line we haven’t drawn yet.
I don’t even know why I care so much.
I don’t know why he matters so much.
I feel too much.
Because of him… Gruene.
With his chiseled, scarred jaw, eyes like stormy water, and hands that fix things even through the scars… he’s beautiful. He’s broken.
He’s not gentle. But he’s not cruel, either.
I cannot stop thinking about the way his pinky twitched when mine brushed over it. That small, sharp, electric thing that happened in the space between stillness and silence.
I felt it.
I know he did, too.
But what does it mean? Can it mean anything?
I fallasleep on the floor.
My back hurts like hell when I wake up, and there’s a stiff ache in my left hip where it pressed against the uneven wood slats all night, but I don’t move right away. I stare at the pale light filtering through the window and let my brain ease back into my body.
There’s something different about this morning. Not in the air or the light or even the way the birds are louder than they should be.
It’s me.
Something’s shifted… inside. A splintered place that doesn’t sting quite the same.
I’m still scared. Still learning how to breathe without checking behind me every five seconds. But there’s something else now, too. Something heavier. Something sharp and slow and warm.
Hope.
I recognize it because it’s unfamiliar. Because it doesn’t sit right yet.
But it’s here and it hashisvoice.Hisname.Hisquiet.Hisstorms.
Gruene.
The water looks different today.Not brighter. Not clearer. Just deeper.
