It’s there, lying with my cheek squashed against the icy tile floor, that I realize how angry I am. I hadn’t understood that until now. It’s a white-hot rage. At him. For leaving. He promised he wouldn’t leave me, and he fucking left me.

My intellect understands that he died, that he didn’t walk away from me. But my emotions know only one thing: he left.

God help me, I’m so angry. I’ve been avoiding and denying that anger for so long, now. The anger is there, simmering, boiling under the surface, and I’ve been ignoring it. It’s why I can’t sleep. Why I can’t eat—I have no appetite, and when I do eat, food is tasteless.

It’s not just sadness, not just missing him.

I’m so angry at him for dying that it’s been poisoning me.

This cabin is the antitoxin I need, apparently. How he knew, I’ll never know. But he did.

I eventually manage to scrape myself off the bathroom floor. When I do, I have an imprint of tiles on my reddened cheek. I go out and haul my bags inside and I unpack every damn thing Tess packed for me, which is just about my entire wardrobe. I put everything away; fill all the drawers with my clothes and the shallow but wide closet with my dresses and my shoes and my boots.

I make myself at home.

Because somehow, I realize I won’t be leaving here any time soon. I can’t leave here until I’m whole again, and that will take a long, long time.

When I’m unpacked and my suitcases are shoved under the bed and on the shelf in the closet, I go over to the wine rack in the kitchen. Withdraw a bottle of Josh, slowly uncork it. I haven’t had red wine since before Adrian died—it was our thing. He liked whiskey and I hate it; I like vodka and he hated it. The one thing we could agree on was red wine.

I pour a glass, swirl it, watching the ruby liquid smear down the glass in receding waveforms. Take a tentative sip.