Page 122 of The Silence Between

When we pulled apart, Ethan's eyes were bright, a flush spreading across his cheeks. “Well, that's one way to make it official,” he murmured, his voice rough with emotion.

“It's about time!” Mari called out, grinning widely. “Now we can stop pretending we don't notice when you stay over.”

“Gross,” Diego said, but he was smiling too, his feigned disgust not quite hiding his approval.

As our laughter joined together in the warm spring air, I felt the last piece click into place—not an ending to our story, but a continuation. A revision. A new chapter beginning with the acknowledgment of what had been growing between us all along, now finally brought into the light under the watchful, approving eyes of the family we'd built together.

EPILOGUE

FIVE YEARS LATER

The spring sunshine spilled across the university quad, warming the black polyester of my graduation gown as I stood among my fellow graduates. Five years ago, I couldn't have imagined this moment. Hell, five years ago, I was standing on a bridge ready to end it all. Now I was here, diploma within reach, surrounded by people who'd fought just as hard for their degrees, though probably with fewer detours through psychiatric hospitals and custody courts.

I shifted my weight, scanning the crowd for my family. There, three rows back, right section. Sophie, now eighteen and radiating a confident poise she'd grown into, held a sign decorated with what had to be a hundred glittery stars. Next to her, Diego, twenty-one and carrying himself with the easy confidence of a young man coming into his own, pretended to be embarrassed by his sister's enthusiasm but couldn't quite hide his smile. Mari had flown in from her job at a tech startup, looking every bit the accomplished professional at twenty-six. And Ethan, my constant through all of this, beaming with the kind of pride that made my chest ache in the best possible way.

My family. My people. The ones who'd seen me at my absolute worst and somehow loved me anyway.

“Leo Reyes,” the dean called, my name echoing through the speakers.

The crowd noise briefly separated into distinct sounds: Sophie's unmistakable “Woohoo!” cutting through the air, Diego's deep voice joining in, Mari's elegant whistle (a skill she'd perfected as a child to call us home for dinner), and Ethan's enthusiastic applause rising above the polite pattering around him.

As I walked across the stage and accepted my diploma, I caught sight of my wrist, the semicolon tattoo visible beneath my sleeve. Once a reminder to simply continue, to not end the sentence of my life. Now a symbol of everything that had come after: not just survival, but revision. Not just continuing, but changing direction. Not just existing, but living.

I'd graduated. With honors. With a future. With possibility stretching out before me like an open road.

And I wasn't traveling it alone.

When people asked why I'd transferred from Business Administration to English Literature halfway through college, I usually gave them the practical answer: better job prospects in publishing and education than I'd initially thought, more aligned with my work at the bookstore. The real answer was more complicated. Business had been the safe choice, the responsible one for someone with three dependents and mounting bills. Literature had been the brave choice, the healing one. The day I officially changed my major, Ethan had taken me out for dinner, raising a glass to what he called “choosing your own story.” It had felt terrifying and exactly right, like jumping into deep water and finding I could swim after all.

* * *

“That box goes in the office,”I called to Diego as he hauled yet another carton of books through the front door. “The one labeled 'Literature,' not 'Business.'”

“They're all books,” he grumbled, but headed in the right direction anyway. “Why do you need so many when everything's digital now?”

“Says the guy with an entire box just for gaming equipment,” I shot back, arranging our meager collection of cookbooks on a kitchen shelf.

The house wasn't much, a modest three-bedroom rental with a small yard and a covered back porch, but it was ours. Or it would be, once we finished moving in. After five years of maintaining separate households, carefully building our relationship while I focused on recovery and finishing my degree, Ethan and I had finally decided to take the next step. The timing worked perfectly, with Diego finishing his junior year of college and Sophie preparing for her freshman year. A new chapter for all of us.

From the back bedroom came the sound of Sophie's playlist, indie rock with vocals that reminded me of early 2000s bands, as she methodically organized her space. Mari moved between the kitchen and living room, organizing dishes and arranging furniture with the casual competence of someone who'd been living independently for years. When had my little sister become this capable adult with opinions on mortgage rates and retirement plans?

“Where do you want the desk?” Ethan asked, wiping sweat from his forehead. Even after all these years, the sight of him still caught me off guard sometimes: the way sunlight played across his features, the laugh lines that had deepened around his eyes, the absolute steadiness he brought to every situation.

“Against the window,” I decided. “We'll need the light.”

He nodded and disappeared back outside to where the rented moving truck sat in the driveway. We'd mapped out a shared office space, two desks positioned so we could work separately but together: his lesson plans and my writing, his academic research and my bookstore inventory management, his practical work and my creative projects somehow coexisting in perfect, messy harmony.

Later, when the main wave of moving had subsided and everyone was occupied with their own spaces, I found myself alone in that office. The late afternoon sun slanted through the windows, catching dust motes dancing in the air. Our books mingled on the shelves: his literary criticism alongside my poetry collections, his educational theory near my business management texts, a physical manifestation of our lives intertwining after years of careful, intentional growth.

The small collection of business textbooks from my first two years of college sat on the bottom shelf, a reminder of the path not taken. I didn't regret the switch to English Literature, not for a second. That decision had opened doors I hadn't known existed, connecting me to professors who recognized something in my writing and pushed me to dig deeper. My thesis on psychological themes in contemporary fiction had been published in a respected literary journal, something I couldn't have imagined when I was slogging through accounting principles and marketing strategies.

It hadn't been easy, these five years. Recovery wasn't a straight line but a winding, sometimes backtracking path. There had been setbacks: panic attacks after particularly stressful weeks, nights when the old guilt would resurface and I'd find myself texting my siblings just to make sure they were okay, moments when the weight of responsibility still threatened to drag me under. But I'd learned to recognize the signs, to reach for help before I shattered, to accept support as strength rather than weakness.

And through it all, Ethan had been there, not as a savior or a solution, but as a partner. Steady, patient, and human in his own struggles. We'd built this life brick by brick, test by test, therapy session by therapy session, until we'd created something neither of us could have imagined that night on the bridge.

“Found you,” Ethan said from the doorway, interrupting my thoughts. “Hiding from the chaos?”

“Just taking it all in,” I replied, gesturing to the room around us. “Hard to believe we're really doing this.”

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