He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
“How?” I ask.
“Chocolates. Like before.” He moves toward his desk. “A note. Simple. Just asking if she’s okay. Letting her know we found her. Giving her the option to respond.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then we leave her alone.”
Can I do that? If she doesn’t respond, if she chooses her new life over us, can I actually walk away?
I look at my ruined hand. The blood seeping through the bandage. The evidence of how well I’m handling this so far.
“I don’t know if I can let her go,” I admit.
“Neither do I.” Dario’s voice is rough. “But we have to try. For her. We have to at least give her the choice.”
I nod. Can’t speak.
He starts writing. Expensive stationery. Neat handwriting.
Are you okay? - D
Three words. The same question they kept asking each other, over and over, because it was the only way they knew how to say I love you without saying it.
“I’ll send them tomorrow,” he says. “She’ll have them by end of week.”
“And then?”
“And then we wait.”
I finish my drink. Set down the glass. My hand is throbbing. My chest is hollow. Everything I thought I knew about what comes next has shattered.
But there’s something underneath the pain. Something that feels almost like hope.
She’s alive. She’s safe. She’s building a life. And soon she’ll know we never stopped looking.
What she does with that information is up to her.
I just hope, fuck, I hope so hard it hurts, that she still wants us in her life.
But what if she doesn’t respond? What if the note sits on her counter next to Saul’s coffee mug and she throws it away? What if she’s so happy in her new life that hearing from us is just a reminder of the dangerous past she escaped? What if I spend the rest of my life waiting for an answer that never comes?
Even a piece of her. Even a fraction. Even just knowing she’s okay.
It would be enough. It would have to be enough.
Because the alternative is nothing.
And nothing is unbearable.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
STEVIE
The bakery’s been open for five weeks.
Five weeks of 4 AM alarms and flour-dusted everything and learning the names of regulars who actually come back.
