Page 118 of Never After Us
The words hit hard.
“There’s someone else, isn’t there?”I asked and add, “Does she make you happy?Unlike me?”
He froze.
Just for a beat.Just enough that I felt something cold slip through me.
“Stop making up shit,” he said.
But his voice didn’t sound like truth.It sounded like exhaustion.Like surrender.Like he was done explaining himself and wanted the conversation to die already.
“You don’t even try to sound believable,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened—hurt, frustration, something bitter twisting through his expression.“You want everything to be dramatic.You always do.Not everything is a catastrophe, Mara.”
“That’s rich,” I shot back.“Coming from the man who can’t even look me in the eye when he says he’s faithful.”
He groaned, dragging a hand over his mouth.“I can’t do this tonight.”
“You never want to do this,” I said, voice cracking.“You just run.”
He turned toward the door.
And something inside me detonated.
“Fine,” I said.“Run, just fucking run but I might not be here when you’re ready to come back home.”
He didn’t turn back.Not even once.The door clicked shut behind him—and that was the last time I saw him alive.
ChapterThirty-Seven
Mara
“I don’t know how to remember him without reliving that night,” I whisper.“I don’t know how to let any part of myself move on.And I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”
Alec’s jaw tightens once—barely—but he doesn’t look away.He doesn’t look afraid of what I just handed him.He just watches me with this quiet intensity that makes me feel seen and stripped down at the same time.He’s not pitying me.He’s not waiting for me to stop crying.He’s just ...there.Present in a way people usually aren’t.
He steps closer.His hand finds my arm first—fingertips brushing the inside of my forearm like he’s asking permission without speaking.Then he slides his palm up slowly, carefully, until it rests just above my elbow.A touch so simple it shouldn’t undo me, yet somehow it feels like my whole-body has been waiting for someone to know exactly where to hold me.
The warmth of him seeps into my skin, steadying something that’s been rattling inside me for years.He isn’t pulling me in or trying to fix me—he’s just there, grounding my shaking without demanding I stop.
He leans in, close enough that I catch the breath he exhales, close enough that the space between us narrows into something almost unbearably intimate.
His thumb moves in a small, instinctive sweep, and it sends a shiver through me I can’t hide.My pulse responds before my mind does, tightening something deep inside me I’ve kept barricaded since the day everything fell apart.
It feels like a moment I didn’t agree to, yet, somehow needed more than I’ll ever admit aloud.
And God help me ...I don’t pull away.
“Mara,” he says, and my name sounds different in his voice.Gentler.Like he’s trying to hand it back to me repaired.“It’s time to work through that.The guilt, the grief.”
He kisses the tip of my nose, and I’m starting to like that.“Time to face what happened.All of it.The hurt before he died.The hurt after.The things you’re still blaming yourself for.”
I look away.Just for a second.Just long enough to collect the little pieces of myself that want to fall apart in his hands.
But then I turn right back to him because my body has decided it trusts him more than my brain does.
“You make it sound so easy,” I murmur, my voice thinning.“Just ...deal with it.But what if I can’t?What if knowing the truth ruins everything I’ve built?What if I find out that I was wrong and?—”
