Page 67 of The Space Between
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t ask where I went. She just offers me her silence like it’s a gift.
And for once, it is.
“You ever have a nightmare while you’re awake?” I murmur, asking her but really just wanting to fill the silence.
She turns her head, meeting and holding my eyes. “All the time.”
I nod. “That road…. the one by the drop… I can’t drive it. Not even for tubing runs. Reece does ‘em.”
Her shoulder brushes mine. “Does it help?”
“No.”
It doesn’t.
Nothing does.
We don’t kiss. We don’t need to.
She’s here, and I’m not running.
That’s enough.
For now, it’s enough.
I spendthe afternoon half-present at the shop, pretending to check inventory while Reece covers runs. He doesn’t say much—just gives me a look like he knows I’m doing the thing I do when I’m trying to disappear inside myself.
“You’re not ghost-proof, Gruene,” he mutters as he passes me a clipboard. “And she’s not the type who sticks around if you start pulling that Houdini bullshit.”
“I’m not,” I say too fast.
He raises a brow. “Aren’t you though? You can be in the same space and still not be there.”
Clenching my jaw, I say nothing.
Fuck you, Reece.
Fuck you for being right.
By six,I can’t take it anymore. I walk back to her place, slowly, deliberately, every step heavier than the last. I expect her to look wary… confused… distant.
She doesn’t. She opens the door like she’s been waiting for me since I left… like I never had to knock, and I think that’s what breaks me.
I don’t have things like this.
Not anymore.
Not since the river.
Dinner smells like garlic and tomatoes and peace.
We eat quietly. It’s not awkward. It’seasy… like the silence is a part of the conversation and not the absence of one.
I tell her about the time Aubree got into the back of a shuttle and told the entire tubing crew she was going to be their “River Queen” and that they had to call her “Captain Sparkle” all summer or they’d lose their jobs.
She laughs so hard she chokes on her pasta. And for one second, I let myself imagine what it would’ve felt like to watch her and Aubree side by side.
Fire and light.
