Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 568(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 568(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
I’ve carved out my own place here, found my own way to exist in the messy reality of life. Not perfect. Not normal. But real. Present. Whole in my own way.
Even if sometimes I still miss him.
Even if sometimes I wonder if he’s found his own healing.
Even if sometimes I hope …
But that’s a pattern I’m trying to break—waiting for someone else to complete. I’m learning to be complete on my own, to find peace in my own company, to create order that comes from strength rather than fear.
Even if my heart still counts the days since I last saw him.
Someone slides into the chair across from me, and I start to say my usual “I’m sorry, this seat is taken” when I look up. The words die in my throat. Because it’s Lee, and he looks … different. Good different. Healthy different. The kind of different that steals my breath and makes my world tilt on its axis.
He’s wearing a crisp blue button-down that brings out the storm in his eyes, the collar open and undone, his hair neat but still slightly rebellious. But it’s more than his appearance—there’s a steadiness to him now, a quiet confidence that has nothing to do with his usual carefully constructed charm.
“Hi,” he says simply, and even his voice is different. Clearer. More present. More real than I’ve ever heard it.
I realize I’m staring, my bare hands frozen around my cup, my perfectly practiced composure scattering like sugar packets in a breeze. This is Lee, but not the Lee I last saw on those cliffs three months ago. Not the Lee drowning himself in bourbon and self-hatred. Not the Lee who needed saving from himself.
This is someone new. Someone solid. Someone who looks at me with eyes that are clear and focused and absolutely terrifying in their intensity.
“You’re not wearing gloves,” he observes softly but doesn’t reach for my hands. Doesn’t try to touch. Doesn’t do anything except notice, like he always has.
“You’re not drinking,” I counter, the words coming out barely above a whisper.
His smile is different, too—real, not practiced. Gentle, not performing. “Ninety-three days sober. Not that I’m counting or anything.”
But he is counting; I can tell. The same way I still count some things, still need some patterns, still find comfort in certain orders. The difference is in how we carry those numbers now—not as chains but as markers of progress.
“Lee—” I start, but he shakes his head.
“Let me? Please? I’ve practiced this speech about a hundred times, and if I don’t get it out now, I might lose my nerve.”
I nod, my hands tightening around my cup, my world narrowing to this moment, this man, this version of us that feels simultaneously familiar and completely new.
The morning sun catches in his hair, highlighting strands of gold I never noticed before. Or maybe I just never let myself notice, too busy maintaining walls and counting spaces and keeping careful distance.
But now …
Now, he sits across from me, solid and present and real.
Now, he looks at me like he sees all of me—torn patterns and healing pieces alike.
Now, everything feels possible in a way it never has before.
And I find myself holding my breath, waiting to hear what this new Lee, this steady Lee, this healing Lee has to say.
Lee takes a sip of what I realize is just plain black coffee. His movements are measured and deliberate like he’s learned his own kind of patterns. Like he’s found his own way to make sense of the world.
“You look good,” I say, because someone needs to break this charged silence, and because it’s true. The shadows under his eyes are gone, replaced by a kind of peace I’ve never seen in him before. His hands are steady as he sets down his cup, no tremors, no desperate need to reach for liquid courage.
“I feel good,” he says, and his voice carries a certainty that makes my heart stutter. “Clear. Present. Real, maybe for the first time since … shit, I don’t know. A long time ago.”
I wonder what kind of healing he’s done in these three months, what kind of peace he’s found while I was learning to exist without gloves.
“I have a job,” he continues, his eyes never leaving mine. “At a tech startup. Doing cybersecurity, if you can believe it. Turns out all those years of hacking my family’s accounts taught me some marketable skills. Well, that and the degree I somehow earned between keg stands.”
I can’t help but smile at that—at how he’s turned rebellion into legitimate work, chaos into order, destruction into creation. “Psh, you’re too much of a gentleman to do a keg stand. It’s beer funnels or nothing for you. But, joking aside, I can believe it. You’ve always been smarter than you let people see.”