Page 74 of Carrick
No judgment. No pity. Just calm. Just him.
And for the first time, I didn’t brace against it. I didn’t move toward him—but I didn’t close the distance either. I stayed where I was. Breathing. Breaking. Healing, maybe.
And so did he.
Still. Quiet. Steady. Like a lighthouse in the dark, refusing to fall when the waves kept coming.
Carrick didn’t press me. He didn’t take a step closer, didn’t try to fill the quiet with anything more than his breath and his presence. The storm inside me had dulled to something quieter, but it still left an ache in its wake—raw around the edges, sitting heavy in my chest. I stood there, arms wrapped loosely around myself like armor I didn’t have the strength to carry anymore.
He glanced toward the nearby armchair and then to me, waiting—not asking, not assuming. Just offering.
I gave a small nod, barely perceptible, but it was enough.
Carrick crossed the room and pulled the chair out a little, his movements slow and steady, like he knew the tension hadn’t fully left my body yet. He didn’t guide me toward it, didn’t try to coax me. He just stepped back again, giving me space to choose.
My knees felt too loose beneath me, but I moved forward and sank into the seat, curling one leg beneath me as my hands slid into my lap. I didn’t speak. Didn’t look at him.
But I didn’t look away, either.
Carrick crouched beside the chair, his forearm resting against the armrest, not quite touching me, but close enough that I could feel the shape of him. Close enough that if I wanted to reach out, I could. Close enough that I didn’t feel so completely untethered.
A silence stretched between us, but it didn’t feel empty anymore. It felt like the air had finally thinned enough to breathe again.
“I brought you water.” His voice was low, almost a murmur. I hadn’t even noticed the bottle in his hand. “It’s just…” He paused, shrugging a little. “Something.”
I took it, fingers brushing his. They were warm. Solid.
“Thanks,” I said softly, my voice nearly lost in the space between us.
He didn’t answer, just gave the smallest incline of his head before sitting back onto the floor beside the chair, one knee bent, the other stretched out. His gaze stayed forward, away from me, like he was trying to make it easier to stay close without making me feel watched.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
And then—slowly, carefully—I reached out and let my fingers settle against the edge of his sleeve. Just a touch. Just a grounding point. He didn’t react, didn’t shift or speak. But he didn’t pull away either.
My shoulders eased a fraction.
Not because the grief was gone. Not because anything had changed. But because someone had stayed.
And that, somehow, was enough to hold me together for one more breath.
15
Bellamy
It’samazing how loud nothingness can be—the kind of silence that hums in your ears and curls under your skin. The kind that follows you room to room, even when you’re surrounded by people pretending things are normal. Even when you’re pretending too.
I’d tried to keep busy. Tried to make myself useful. I folded clean laundry that didn’t belong to me. Dried dishes that were already dry. Alphabetized a spice rack. Made three different cups of tea and drank none of them. But it didn’t help.
No matter how many times I reorganized the pantry or wiped down the counters or folded towels that smelled like someone else’s detergent, nothing helped. The house didn’t feel like a place that could be cleaned into comfort, and I didn’t feel like a person who could be calmed by tasks.
Because underneath all of it, I was waiting. Holding my breath like a fuse was burning somewhere I couldn’t see. Waiting for someone to say it. To shatter the forced calm. To admit out loud what we were all thinking, but no one dared to speak. That it had been too long. And Rayden might not make it out alive.
The house had a pulse of its own. This morning, it thudded low and alien. Not tense, exactly—but charged. Like static before a storm. Like the walls themselves were holding their breath along with me.
Everyone moved softer. Spoke quieter. Kept their distance without being obvious about it. I’d seen it before in libraries—kids weaving around stacks where someone was crying softly into a textbook, adults giving wide berths to grief they didn’t know how to approach. That’s what I felt like now. Something fragile sat in the middle of the room—grief in a glass bottle, perched on the edge of a shelf—too unstable to touch, too dangerous to ignore.
No one mentioned last night. Not Carrick raising hell at the table, or Deacon saying the things no one else would. Not Maddy’s voice, shaking with conviction when she told them I deserved space to fall apart. And not the way I’d stumbled down the hallway afterward, hands clenched and chest on fire, barely holding it together while the world blurred at the edges.
