Page 163 of Seven Lost Summers
I don’t hand the suitcase to her. I start walking toward the terminal, wheels dragging behind me. Quinn follows, with Nate beside her.
Inside the terminal, the air changes. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, making everything feel too bright. The suitcase wheels thump over the tiles, each uneven seam in the floor sending a little shudder through the handle.
Quinn’s close enough now that I keep stealing glances, memorising what I can before she’s gone. She has her head down lost in her own thoughts. Her hair is tucked behind one ear, her mouth fixed in a way that tells me she’s swallowing words she won’t let herself speak.
The crowd doesn’t slow for us, but it parts.
People glance up, eyes flicking between Nate and me, phones sliding into hands. I don’t need the whispers to understand what they’re saying. Normally, I’d smirk, maybe even play along, tossing out flirty lines. But today, I keep my head down. The attention sits wrong. This isn’t a moment I want the world to see.
We stand off to the side while Quinn checks her suitcase in.
The conveyor swallows the bag whole, and for a second I hate how easily it disappears, like the universe is reminding me how simple losing something can be when you’re not ready to let go.
When she turns toward us, her steps are slower than they should be. Her shoulders are too stiff, her eyes fixed on the floor as though looking up might split her open. Every line in her body screams restraint, that desperate grip on control you only get when you know you’re a second away from breaking.
She stops in front of us and finally lifts her head.
Fuck.
Tears are sliding down her cheeks. She doesn’t wipe them away. She lets them fall, thin silver trails catching the harsh airport light, proof she’s bleeding from the inside out.
It hits me hard enough to steal the air from my lungs. Because I have seen her this way before.
The day she turned up at Nate’s door, her face pale, hands trembling, eyes already emptied of light. Her voice was small when she told us Bianca was gone. And in those seconds, I swear I felt the ground split open beneath my feet, swallowing whatever part of me still believed we were untouchable.
Now the feeling is back.
That same hollow punch to the gut that leaves you reeling, waiting for the world to tilt back into place, knowing it never will.
She steps in close and hugs Nate first, her arms clinging to him for half a breath before she lets go.
After that she’s in my arms, smelling faintly of my shampoo I washed her hair with this morning. My fingers press into her back, memorizing the shape of her before she slips through my hands.
“Goodbye,” she says, quietly. “Take care of each other.”
And then she’s gone.
Moving through the crowd, away from us.
My chest is carved out, scraped raw.
The ache doesn’t fade, only waits for the next hit.
And fuck me, that’s exactly why I can’t let myself love her the way I already fucking do.
Chapter 28
Theo
Thehouseistoofucking quiet for how loud everything inside me is.
Every tick of the clock slams like a hammer to the skull. Even the distant hum from the fridge cuts too sharp, too clean, in a world that’s supposed to stay messy.
Sunlight filters through the slats of the blinds, breaking into long, gold bars across the floor.
It’s warm, delicate, beautiful in a way that almost makes me want to tear the blinds down. Because nothing about me is delicate right now. Nothing is fucking beautiful.
There’s a faint trace of her perfume that’s somehow still here, three days later. Or perhaps that’s just in my head. I don’t even trust my senses anymore.
