Chapter 128: Ghosts between us
The silence was strange.
Not the comforting sort that cradled me to sleep with soft breaths and consistent heartbeats but the tense, anticipatory sort that vibrated under the floorboards and hung between words like a ghost waiting to be noticed.
It had been four days since I'd changed my number.
Caspian didn't say much when I told him. Just nodded quietly and gave one of his rare, brief smiles before returning to whatever file he'd been pretending to read. I think he was relieved—guardedly. As if he didn't want to hope too loudly.
The messages had stopped.
No more nameless digits pleading with me to return. No more promises of ending everything, of love deformed into something grotesque. My phone remained silent, the motionless screen a blessing and an omen. Too silent. Too still. I had told myself I was free from it now, that I could breathe.
But I never quite exhaled.
It was that night that Caspian got home early. I had been curled up on the sofa for over an hour, pretending to read that book; words blurred together. The opening of the door hadn't registered on my brain; that was, until I heard the distinct sound of his boots shifting on tile.
Then, his voice. Low. Almost hopeful.
"I brought wine," he said. "And that awful cherry chocolate thing you pretend not to love.".
My lips twisted into what was almost a smile. "You remembered."
"I always remember."
There was something in the way he'd said it—more like a confession than a comfort. Like he was still working to prove that he had a reason for sitting there with me.
He put the wine and dessert on the coffee table and sat down next to me, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the heat from his shoulder. This was when I could feel that he was trying.
"How was today?" he asked, his gaze flicking briefly to the book then to me.
"Quiet," I said. "Almost peaceful."
He nodded slowly. "That's good."
We drank the wine. Talked about nothing—about the crooked fence in the garden and the neighbor's barking dog and how he thought he might try to cook one night even though he'd set toast on fire the last time.
I laughed. A real laugh. It caught me off guard.
He looked at me then. Not like a man scanning for danger, but like a man seeing someone he’d missed terribly, even if she was sitting right in front of him.
His eyes softened. “I missed that sound.”
I looked away before the weight of it could settle too deep. “I’m trying, Cas.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “So am I.”
For a moment, it felt like the storm had passed.
I should have known better.
Later I was sitting on the kitchen counter, legs swinging in the air as I scrolled listlessly through emails, clearing out spam and unread newsletters I'd subscribed to in a different life. Caspian was at the stove, filling the kettle and humming to himself some old tune.
Then I saw it.
One unread message.
No subject. No sender I knew. Just a burner account with a series of random letters. The type that couldn't be traced. My fingers lingered over it for a second too long, and then I opened it.
Three words.
I found you anyway.
The air escaped my lungs like a blow to the chest.
I stared at the screen, hoping it would say something different—be something different. My fingers were freezing, trembling so hard I nearly dropped the phone.
Caspian came toward me, a casual smile on his face. "Do you want chamomile or—"
He stopped.
He saw my face.
In an instant, he was across the room. "Lily?"
I couldn't speak. I just handed him the phone.
His eyes moved across the screen. Then his jaw clenched, the way that muscle by his temple throbbed when he was angry but trying not to be.
"Goddamn it," he muttered.
I slowly shook my head. "I changed everything, Cas. My number. My passwords. Everything."
"I know,"
"He still found me.".
He placed the phone down softly, as if it might explode. And he took my hands, his warm and steadying touch a comfort.
"He's not here," he said. "He's not in this house. He doesn't get to enter this space."
"But he already has," I whispered. "He's everywhere. In the mirrors. In the shadows. In my inbox."
Caspian leaned in closer until our knees touched, his hands wandering up my arms, mooring me. "Then we burn every shadow."
I raised my eyes to his, really looked. His eyes—blue-gray as smoke before a storm—burned. Not with fury, not now. Something deeper. Protective. Desperate. Tender.
"I'm afraid," I said. My voice broke, and I hated that it did.
"I know," he said softly. "So am I."
He didn't flinch over it. He didn't try to be the impenetrable, hard man he could be. He just… admitted it, and with that act gave me permission to breathe,
The kettle whistled behind him, shrill and sharp. Neither of us moved.
But instead, he led me by the hand to the kitchen floor. We sat there, pushing into cabinets with our backs, the overhead shining down in a soft gold haze on marble and untouched teacups.
I leant into him; rested my head on his shoulder. He smelled like cedar and soap and something distinctly him. His arm came around me slowly, carefully, as if afraid that I might shatter.
We didn't talk.
The silence was no longer heavy. It had to be, though. Healing.
He whispered after a while, "I keep thinking if I say the right word, I'll mend this."
Face into the crook of his neck, my voice whispered: "There is nothing to mend. Just… survive."
He nodded slowly. "Then we survive. With us."
Only then would I realize that I was crying when, rubbing away a tear from my cheek, he asked, "I don't know who I am when I am not afraid.
He kissed my temple. "You are still you. Just… hiding beneath the ashes."
I smiled into his skin.
Later, the sleep crept in—gentle and silent and unexpected. My final thought before the darkness took over was that perhaps, just perhaps, love wasn't in the lack of fear.
Perhaps it was standing in the midst of it, deciding to remain anyway.