Prologue
Jenna
This is it. This is the moment I lose him.
And I say nothing.
His gaze is a bullet, clean and brutal. He looks at me as if I’m a stranger; not with anger, but with something far worse. Detachment.
God, I just wish he would break. I wish he would scream.
But, no. Alex doesn’t yell. He withdraws. Pulls back like a tide, inch by inch, until suddenly you’re left standing on dry sand, barefoot and alone, wondering where the water went.
And I am a storm chaser. I push until I see cracks, press until something breaks. Because only then, after it’s broken, can I know for sure. Only then can I be certain it was real.
I’ve been pushing him away for months, chipping at us with every pointless fight, every cold shoulder. I sought turmoil as if it were treasure, barring him from my heart on some misguided quest for answers that never existed.
Yet some stubborn corner of my soul clung to the fantasy that he’d stay, no matter how forcefully I pushed him away.
I want him to fight for it. To push back. To tell me I hurt him, and to say that he loves me anyway. To give me everything I no longer deserve.
I want him to stay.
But Alex knows when something’s dead. And he never forgets what killed it.
His eyes are too dark now; stripped of the light they once carried - the light that drew me in, that warmed my cold edges, that held me for so long.
The light I just shattered.
His nod is slow. Firm. Final.
And just like that, he’s gone; bags in hand, walking out the door like he’s been rehearsing it for months.
I don’t cry. I don’t even move. I am rooted to the floor, arms crossed over my chest like a shield, as if posture alone could save me.
The words tangle behind clenched teeth, bitter and useless.
I’m sorry.
Please stay.
I’ll be…
I’ll be better.
I don’t say them. They sink like stones, a cluster of pleas and promises colliding in my throat.
The lamp beside the couch still burns, spilling such soft, stubborn light across the floor, and I despise it. It paints the room in gentle gold, mocking me with its false warmth, as if I can’t see every shadow masked beneath its glow.
As if I don’t already know he isn’t coming back.
He isn’t coming back.
This is it. This is the moment I lose him.
And finally, my legs give out.
***
Chapter 1
Jenna
Seven years later
Every interaction feels like a glass I’m trying not to drop.
I nod. Smile. Say thank you like it’s my job.
Because today, it is.
I stare blankly at my father's hands, thoughts tumbling through memory. When I was a child, I would sit at the kitchen table and build little houses out of paper. They were fragile things, always on the brink of collapse, yet I never noticed. I would lose hours building entire neighborhoods, one delicate, paper house at a time, trusting wholeheartedly in their ability to stand. It never even crossed my mind to fear they’d fall. My father’s hands were always there to steady them.
David places his hand at the small of my back, his touch warm—the presence I’m supposed to lean into.
He is stable. Expected. A placeholder, meant to keep me upright. He hasn’t said much, and for that I am quietly grateful.
Phrases float through the air like smoke. I’m sorry. Stay strong. He’ll be missed. But the words are formless, weightless, and impossible to hold onto.
My eyes shift back to his hands, folded one over the other, unmoving and deliberate. They climb to his face.
It’s him, and yet, it’s not him. Familiar features, softened by makeup and too much stillness. He looks like a wax figure of the man I always loved; composed, silent, decorated with a tie he never would have chosen.
Someone combed his hair in the wrong direction. I want to reach out and muss it. I want to undo the order death is trying to impose on him.
My gaze lingers, fixed on the stranger wearing my father’s shape.
He's too still.
Too young.
Too gone.
David shifts beside me. “How are you holding up?”
I smile. Lie. “I’m fine.”
He squeezes my waist gently. It’s a kind gesture, probably meant to anchor me. But it doesn’t reach the part of me that’s floating somewhere above the room.
David is doing everything right. And yet, I feel nothing.
People move. More hands. More voices. Faces flicker on the edge of recognition, blurring in and out of focus, a tidal swell of motion and condolences, sweeping through the church.
I want it to take me.
I want to disappear, to leave my body and climb into a different version of this day, one where my dad is still alive and mumbling about the crowd.
Time seems to crawl and escape all at once. I smile at strangers whose names dissolve before they even register. A long-lost neighbor from my teenage years nearly squeezes the air out of me. The tissue in my hand and remains untouched, wilting away with the words I’m supposed say.
Then something shifts.
And the room stills.
I don’t look right away. I don’t need to. Some part of me knows, a gut-deep recognition that has nothing to do with sight.
My stomach knots. I force my head to turn, slowly, as if moving too fast might make it worse.
Then, I see him. And my body goes cold.
Alex.
He is taller than I remember. His shoulders have broadened, his posture more controlled - less loose, less impulsive.
But his face - his face is the same. Older maybe, but still carved with that stormy, composed expression that once drove me crazy. That stoic stare I couldn’t fully appreciate until it was gone.
His hands fidget at his sides, the way they always used to when he didn’t know what else to do with them.
He takes one step forward.
Another.
And then he kneels.
Right there, in front of my father’s casket. Not in ritual, but in a simple act of reverence that breaks something inside me.
Shadows drift across his cheek when he lowers his head, bringing his face into view beneath the light.
I watch his lips move with whispers, words I can't hear and would give anything to. Prayers. Memories. Regrets. I can only guess at their meaning.
He stays there, on his knees at my father’s side, longer than most. Maybe longer than anyone.
His stare shifts.
My breath catches and holds.
And I watch him, stunned to silence, as time collapses in on itself like a paper house.
As seven years vanish, like vapor.