Chapter 45

Chapter 45
I woke to the sound of Jackson’s voice in the kitchen. Not raised. Not tense. Just low and steady, threaded through with that quiet gravity he always carried in the morning. It wrapped around the sound of a kettle on the stove and the rustle of paper being turned—newspapers, probably, because Jackson still read them in print like it was some form of meditation. The air smelled faintly of cedar and something warm, like cinnamon and soap. The scent made the house feel like it belonged to us. For the first time in days, I didn’t lie; I was still waiting for my heart to settle. I just breathed.

I got up slowly, padding across the floor in thick socks, pausing at the top of the stairs to watch him move through the kitchen below. He didn’t see me at first. He was leaning one hip against the counter, his phone tucked to his ear, and his eyes focused out the window like the sky was telling him a story. Something was soothing in the way he listened, like whoever was on the other end had all the space in the world to speak without interruption. He looked so at home in the quiet. And I realized I did, too.

I made my own coffee that morning, hands steady, feet grounded on the tile. It wasn’t about control or ritual. It was about choosing something small and letting that be enough. The mug warmed my fingers as I moved through the living room, checking the windows without really thinking about it, watching the light spill slowly across the yard. The plant Jackson had given me sat on the windowsill, angled slightly toward the sun, its tag still tucked in the soil, for roots, not walls.
I took another sip and let the words settle inside me.

Later, I was walking down the hallway when a board creaked beneath my foot; it was just a simple sound, even familiar. But it sent a pulse through my chest before I could stop it, my body reacting before my brain had a chance to reason with it. I froze. There was no threat. No shadow. Just the echo of memory, of nights when that same creak meant someone was angry, someone was coming, and I needed to be smaller, quieter, already sorry. But now? It meant nothing more than old wood and settled weight. I leaned against the wall and breathed. That was the thing about echoes—they could fool you into flinching long after the sound had faded. But they couldn’t make the house unsafe unless you let them rewrite what it meant. Later, I wrote in my journal, the pen moving slowly across the page:

“Not fear. Just memory, still echoing.”

That afternoon, Jackson asked if I wanted to go for a walk. There was no agenda, no destination, just a path that curved along the back of the property and dipped through the trees like it had nowhere to be. We didn’t talk about the photo or the camera footage. We didn’t talk about Daniel. Instead, we talked about coffee. And how long it had taken Jackson to stop drinking it black like punishment. He confessed he’d only started adding milk after trying the way I made it.
I teased him for pretending to be a purist. He told me he was a reformed snob. We talked about music we missed, songs we used to play on repeat when we still believed repetition could fix things. I told him about a piano piece I hadn’t played since high school. He asked what it would take for me to sit down at a piano again. I said maybe one day soon. We didn’t hold hands the whole time. But we walked in rhythm. And I realized: we were dreaming again. Not surviving, not hiding, just imagining a life.

When we got back, I found Jackson upstairs, standing in front of his dresser with one of the drawers open. He looked over his shoulder when I entered, and I saw the hesitation in his hands, the way he rested them lightly on the edge like he didn’t want to make a ceremony of what he was about to say.

“I was thinking,” he said slowly, “this drawer’s been empty for a while. Thought maybe it could be yours. No pressure. No timeline. Just if you want space.”

He didn’t wait for my answer. He just stepped back, let the words exist without expectation. I didn’t say anything right away. But that night, after brushing my teeth and pulling on an old hoodie that still smelled like laundry detergent and sunlight, I slid one of my notebooks into the drawer. The green one, hardcover, edges soft from being opened and closed too many times. I closed the drawer gently. That was my answer. Fear still knocked sometimes. But love always opened the door first, and it was that echo I was learning to trust