“You’re always welcome here. As long as you need.” She shifted to try to pull herself off the couch, but without abdominal muscles, she didn’t make it far.

I stood and offered my hand, hoisting her off the couch. But once standing, she didn’t let my hand go. I could tell she wanted to hug me but curbed the impulse.

“You deserve better than Brock,” she said, her blue eyes earnest.

“I know,” I answered, and I did.

But it sucked so bad that I felt like I didn’t. The pain I’d so proudly noted as absent wasn’t absent at all. It trickled under the surface, beneath the bedrock of will and anger. As Ivy gathered up some clothes and shepherded me into the bathroom, I considered that pain, the deceiving smallness of it.

When she closed the door and I was alone, it cracked open like the earth, spreading in a rumbling chasm. The hiss of the shower covered the hitch in my breath. The steam from the stream masked the tears in my eyes. And I stepped into its scalding rain, welcoming the punishment as pain swallowed me whole.

Pinging, stinging water against my scalp, rolling down my back, singeing my shoulders, teasing my skin to a dangerous shade of red. And every second brought another wave of memories. Brock in his tux, spinning me around a dance floor, my hand in his, his eyes full of love and a joke on his lips. His face, beautiful and tender across our pillows. The easy way he laughed, the easy way he loved.

But it was a lie, every moment, every kiss.

And I was a fool for believing him.

The water cooled by the time my tears slipped down the drain. I stepped into a pair of Ivy’s sleep shorts and a tank, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. The mist on the mirror receded slowly until my reflection sharpened. The girl peering back at me looked equally like the fresh-faced teenager I’d once been and a woman older than me, more world-worn and cynical. Gray eyes, bright from tears, sunken from grief.

So I reached for Ivy’s eye cream and did something about it.

Because that was who I was—a woman who did something about it. I was a fixer, a problem solver, a perpetual motion machine who only moved in one direction. Forward.

And forward I would go.

After tidying up and gathering my things, I exited the bathroom and stepped into the quiet, dark house. The sound of their voices were muted by distance, the light from their bedroom slanting into the hall. Ivy laughed, a soft burst, followed by Dean’s deep baritone, and a sudden longing struck me, a fissure in the patch I’d mended the chasm with. But I smoothed it, turning for the nursery and my solitude.