I can see you

Chapter 31

                      ( EDWARD'S POV)

The days had started folding into each other. Long, grey and weightless. Time didn’t move forward anymore. It just hovered like mist waiting to disappear. Rosy hadn’t said much lately. Not about the dreams or about the horrors she coughed awake from. Not about the way she sometimes stopped in the hallway and just stared. Not at me or at anything but just the wall like she was listening for something I couldn’t hear.

We still shared the same space. Tea in the mornings for her and coffee for me. But we weren’t sharing presence anymore. We sat across from each other like people who’d been lovers in a former life and had forgotten what to do with all that closeness now. I kept reaching across the table, metaphorically. Saying things like “sleep okay?” or “need anything from the store?” but she just nodded, polite and hollow.

That was the hardest part. Not the distance but the pretance that it wasn’t there. Not knowing if we were waiting for something to heal or just waiting for something to finally die. I knew her nightmares were back. Or maybe they never left. I only noticed because I kept waking up around the same time every night. A sudden stillness would shake me awake, the kind that usually comes right before someone screams.

She didn’t scream. She just gasped. Sucked in air like she’d fallen through herself. Sometimes she whispered things I couldn’t make out. Once, I thought I heard a name. A soft one like it hurt her to speak it. I reached out once, just touched her arm lightly not to wake her, just to remind her she wasn’t alone. She didn’t flinch but she didn’t lean into it either. That was when I knew. We weren’t fixing anything. We were just trying not to shatter louder than we already had.

And then there was Killian. No calls. No Friday check-ins. No cryptic little texts pretending he still had my back. Three weeks of silence, that I had initially mistaken for space. Ironically, it felt a bit suffocating. It was intended, like he knew the game had gone too far and didn’t want to stick around for the fallout. But Killian wasn’t the type to walk away from unfinished work. He never liked leaving things mid-way. Maybe that’s why he didn’t leave me, even when I disappeared on him after the car accident. He waited then. That’s what this felt like. Not an exit but a pause. Like a cat pulling back before it pounced. Like silence with teeth.

I drove to his office first. It was tucked behind a liquor store downtown, classic Killian. He always preferred invisibility over status. He had said that anonymity gave him clarity. The truth he hadn't said aloud was that it gave him power.

The door was locked and windows were dark. A stack of mail curled out from the slot like something forgotten or intentionally left to rot. Inside, through the glass, I could make out the furniture. I used to think his taste was plain but now it felt parse and surgical. There was a single chair and a narrow desk. One of his psychology books still lied on the desk, it's edges were perfectly parallel with the desk edges. The plant by the corner was brown and slumped over like it had given up long ago.

There was no mess, no clutter or any signs of packing or panic. There was just vacancy like the room had exhaled and never inhaled again. It didn’t feel like sudden abandonment, it felt more like a staged disappearance.

Next was his house. Same pattern. Same absence. The porch was untouched and curtains were drawn tight like secrets. A hibiscus plant was still hanging by the front window, its petals curled inward like fingers around a secret. I stood there for a long time, not ringing the bell. Just listening. No sound. No movement. Just the empty hum of someone who used to exist here and now didn’t exist at all. It felt like walking through the shell of a man I thought I understood. The one who’d once cleaned blood off my hands and told me I was still human.