Page 54 of October
The days I spent in the hotel after the fallout were unbearable. The walls felt like they were closing in, like they knew I didn't belong there. Not anymore. The air was heavy and stale, like every breath I took was borrowed. There were moments I'd catch my reflection in the mirror and not recognize the man looking back—tired, unshaven, hollow. Like someone who had been sleepwalking through his own life and finally woke up to find everything he loved had slipped through his fingers.
And the idea of living without her... it choked me. Without her laughter echoing from the kitchen. Without the sound of her brushing her teeth in the other room while humming that off-key song she always liked. Without her hands tangled in mine when the world got too loud. Without her perfume clinging to my shirts long after she'd gone. GOD, her unique scent!
Without the warmth of her beside me in bed, grounding me, anchoring me—especially when life turned cold. The absence of her wasn't just silence. It was a scream—constant, echoing, merciless, and every time I tried to breathe, that thought crushed my lungs all over again.
She was home. And I destroyed that. Me and no one else. Joseph stepped in closer. He didn't hug me. He didn't offer sympathy I couldn't carry. Instead, he gripped my shoulders with both hands, firm, grounding, impossible to ignore. I looked up, met his eyes.
"Listen to me," he said. " I know it feels like the end of your world, but maybe not, your life with october, it is her to decidebut when it comes to your father, Thomas, I'll be your dad. In all the ways your father never was. I'll show up. I'll be there when it matters, and even when it doesn't. I'll check in, not because I have to, but because I want to know how you're doing. I'll call you out when you're wrong, challenge you when you're slipping, and I'll still be there the next day—no matter what. I'm not promising to be perfect. But I am promising not to leave.
"I'll be the one who cheered on you when you were eight," he continued, quieter now. "The one who saw your drawings and said, 'That's amazing, buddy, draw me another.' The one who taped them to the fridge, not the one who threw them in the trash like your joy was an inconvenience."
I closed my eyes to keep the tears from falling.
"I'll be the one who tells you it's okay to cry when you're twelve and the world feels too big, too loud, too cruel. When you start to think something's wrong with you for feeling too much. For caring too deeply."
Joseph's voice softened, but the conviction in it only grew.
"I'll be the one who reminds you at seventeen, when everything in you is screaming that love makes you weak, that you're not broken. That wanting to be loved isn't weakness. That tenderness doesn't make you soft. It makes you human. It makes you strong."
My throat tightened, something like a sob trying to crawl out of my chest.
"And I will be the one to remind you, as an adult, that it is not only okay but sometimes necessary to start over. To begin again, even when it feels impossible. I'll remind you that you are notdefined by the pain of your past or the wounds left by an abusive childhood. You have the right to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, from the ashes of everything that tried to break you.
You can choose to become someone new—someone who is not shaped by fear or silence, but by strength and self-awareness. I'll be there to help you learn how to recognize your own emotions, to name them without shame, and to express them with clarity and courage. Because healing isn't about forgetting what happened; it's about learning how to live beyond it, and knowing you don't have to do that alone."
"But October?" His voice shifted, harder now but not cruel. It was the kind of tone that left no room for argument. "She's my princess. My blood. My priority. I've watched her hurt, and I've held her through it. So I don't care how sorry you are, or how broken you feel, or how much you wish you could turn back time. None of that matters now."
He stepped closer, eyes locked on mine, unwavering. "You'll do whatshewants. Not what you want. Not what you think is right.Shedecides. If she gives you a chance to fix it, you'll move heaven and hell to make it right. You'll prove yourself every day, in every way, until she says you've done enough. And if she doesn't want that—if she tells you to walk away—then you will. No second chances. No arguments. No unfinished goodbyes. You'll respect her choice, even if it kills you."
He paused. "Got it?"
My eyes burned, stinging with everything I couldn't say. Regret. Shame. Hope I wasn't sure I deserved. I nodded, slow and stiff, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. My heart felt like it was collapsingin on itself, but somehow still beating.
"Yes, sir," I whispered, barely louder than breath.
He raised an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, "Sir'? What am I, a Civil War reenactor? Should I fetch my monocle and start talking about the good ol' days? Call me Joe, Bass Boss," and he laughed at his own joke.
Oh God..
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October (POV)
It had been two weeks since the public scandal broke and the legal storm that followed. The house had slowly returned to a strange kind of normal—quiet, tentative, almost suspended in time. Every evening, Thomas came home, and every evening I went out. I told him I was catching up with friends, blowing off steam. That wasn't entirely untrue. But in reality, I'd gone back to school.
Not to finish my old law degree, I let that version of myself go a long time ago, but to study something new. Something that made me feel alive again. I enrolled in a certification program in fragrance design and product development. Perfumery. At first, it sounded ridiculous. Who was I to believe I could blend oils and notes into something people might actually wear? But I couldn't stop thinking about it, about scent, memory, emotion. How something so invisible could be so powerful. For the first time in years, I imagined waking up excited—not exhausted or defeated before the day even began. I imagined pouring myself into work that didn't drain me but filled me. Work that smelledlike lavender oil and citrus peels, that shimmered with color and intention. Maybe perfumes, maybe skincare, maybe candles. I didn't know yet, but I knew I wanted to create.
More importantly, I wanted to be present.
I didn't want a job that consumed every corner of my life. I wanted something that gave me space, space to pick up my kids from school, to cook with them, to dance in the kitchen on a Tuesday night. I wanted a part-time job that paid the bills while I built something slowly, carefully, intentionally. A job that gave me the flexibility to be both mother and maker. Nurturer and entrepreneur.
I didn't tell Thomas yet. Not about the classes, not about the formulas I was mixing in old jam jars in the laundry room, and definitely not about the divorce. No matter what he'd done, I could see he was hurting. Deeply. His father's betrayal, the implosion of our marriage, the long silence from his mother—he was carrying it all like a quiet storm. And I didn't want to add another crash of thunder.
But I was glad he came every day.
Glad he stayed every night with the kids, even if the bed next to mine stayed cold. There was something grounding—comforting, even—about knowing he was in the next room reading bedtime stories or packing school lunches, like he was finally choosing to exist in the parts of our lives he used to miss.
Watching him play with Lola—her delighted shrieks echoing down the hallway as he chased her with a plush dragon and exaggerated roars—something inside me twisted in a way that was hard to name. A sharp, aching tenderness.
