Page 95 of Every Shattered Note
Would that be too much?
Too soon?
It’s strange—how fast someone can take root under your skin.How you can meet a person and just know something in you recognizes them, like you’ve been searching without realizing it?
Maybe it isn’t love.Maybe it’s something different I’ve never encountered in my life.
In the end, I fold the page carefully, pressing the crease flat.I won’t send it.
It isn’t for him.
It’s for me—to remind myself that what I felt was real, even if he’s gone.
Outside, the city hums quietly.Someone laughs in the hallway, a car door slams, the elevator dings.Ordinary sounds.Life is going on, even when mine feels like it’s been paused mid-breath.
When I finally crawl into bed, the sheets smell faintly of rain and detergent and a life I’m not sure belongs to me anymore.
Sleep doesn’t come easily.Every time I close my eyes, I see his face—the way he looked at me before I boarded the plane.Half apology, half confession.Like he wanted to say something that mattered, but couldn’t find the words in time.
So, I lie in the dark, listening to the rain whisper against the glass, waiting for a call that won’t come.
And still, somewhere deep inside me, a voice insists he’ll find a way back.
Because maybe, for once, love won’t be the thing that leaves.
ChapterThirty-Six
Dexter
The city stings.
Sunlight scrapes across the tarmac like it’s trying to blind me.The air smells like asphalt and expectation, thick with the noise of a place that never learned how to whisper.After the hush of San Cristóbal—where the day moved like warm waves and even the arguments felt like they came with a warning—this place feels jagged.Unapologetic.
The colors are wrong, too saturated.Palm trees line the perimeter like they’re guarding something sacred—or hiding it.
And I already want to leave.
We land at a tucked-away airstrip in Van Nuys—not quite private, but quiet enough for people who can afford to keep their names out of Page Six.The kind of place where actors past their prime and studio heads on their third divorce touch down without anyone blinking.Where secrets hit the ground before the tabloids catch wind.
And still—Eddie’s already there, phone to his ear, pacing like something’s on fire.
He waits at the bottom of the stairs like a storm cloud in a suit, phone glued to one ear, another clutched in his hand like he might throw it or eat it.His tie is slung around his neck in a half-assed knot.Jaw grinding.Eyes glassy.He probably hasn’t slept, and he’s vibrating with too much caffeine and not enough hope.
The second my boots hit the tarmac, he mutters, “Don’t say anything.Not a single word.Cameras are at every gate.We’re going through the back.”
No ‘good morning.’No ‘welcome home.’Not even a nod to the fact that I’ve just crash-landed into a scandal I didn’t start.
I slide into the SUV.The door slams shut, and the city starts bleeding past the window in smudges of movement—billboards for movies I didn’t audition for, palm trees too thin to offer shade, the downtown skyline flickering through smog like a mirage.
I haven’t eaten.I’m pumped with just coffee, adrenaline, and regret.
And her.
Aly.
I still taste her on my tongue—salt, heat, want.That last kiss shouldn’t have felt like goodbye, but it did.It fucking did.A silent surrender pressed into lips, into breath, into everything I didn’t say.
She whispered Promise, and I said nothing.I didn’t deserve her voice in that moment, let alone the promise she was asking for.
