Chapter 23 Somewhere Between Goodbye and Almost

She hadn’t been back to that part of town in months.

Not since the café.

Not since everything shifted  from being his wife to being herself again.

The rain had stopped that morning, leaving the air washed and clean, the kind of quiet that always followed storms. She liked mornings like this. They made the world feel forgiving or at least like it was trying to be.

Amara pushed open the door of the small bookstore tucked between a flower shop and a tea café. She used to come here on her lunch breaks, before her life became about signed papers and silent meals. Back then, she’d wander through aisles and let words hold her together.

Now, she was just… browsing. Trying to feel something ordinary.

The scent of paper and ink met her like an old friend. Rows of spines lined the shelves, whispering stories she hadn’t had time for. Her fingers traced over titles she didn’t recognize until she stopped at one  The Things We Almost Say.

She smiled faintly. The title felt ironic, too close to truth.

As she flipped it open, a folded receipt slipped out and fluttered to the floor. She bent to pick it up, but her breath caught when she saw the handwriting. Familiar. Clean. Controlled.

His.

A name at the top confirmed it: Liam A. Reece.

Her chest tightened not from pain this time, but something else. Nostalgia, maybe. The kind that stings and soothes at once.

The receipt was dated a week ago. He’d been here.

She looked around instinctively, as though the shelves might still hold his shadow.

For a moment, she didn’t move. The air felt different now, charged with memory. She wasn’t sure whether to put the book back or buy it. Walking away felt easier. But easier wasn’t always healing.

She took it to the counter.

When she got home, she set the book on her table, unopened. It stayed there for days staring back at her, daring her to read, daring her to remember.

Across town, Liam didn’t realize he’d left that receipt behind.

He’d gone to that same bookstore a week earlier, chasing distraction.

He wasn’t supposed to be there either. But sometimes, you end up in familiar places without meaning to  pulled by habits your heart still remembers.

He’d picked up that same book, skimmed through it, and stopped at a line that felt too close:

“We never really lose people. We just meet them again in different silences.”

It had unnerved him enough to put the book down and walk away.

Now, somewhere out there, it was in her hands.

He didn’t know that yet. But fate, it seemed, had a cruel sense of poetry.

Days passed. Amara couldn’t stop glancing at the book.

She’d tried ignoring it tried burying herself in work, her morning runs, her quiet evenings with tea and half-read novels. But every time she passed that table, her gaze landed there.

Finally, one evening, she gave in.

She opened the first page  and froze.

There, scrawled faintly in pencil at the top corner, were words she recognized immediately. His handwriting again. Small. Careful. Hesitant.

“To remember what I forgot to say.”

That was it.

No name. No explanation. Just that.

It was almost cruel, how he could still reach her without even being here.

She closed the book and leaned back, eyes shut. The silence of her apartment felt too full.

She wondered what he’d meant. What had he forgotten to say?

Apology? Regret? Or maybe  something she wasn’t ready to name.

She didn’t want to go back there. But some part of her  the one that still looked for meaning in accidents  couldn’t let it go.

So she opened her laptop. Logged into her old email.

The one they used to share work updates on back when everything between them was still business.

No new messages, of course. But she hovered over his contact for a long time, thumb grazing the trackpad like a thought she didn’t dare complete.

She didn’t write. Not yet.

Instead, she sent the smallest sign the universe could carry  she ordered another copy of the same book.

And had it shipped anonymously.

To him.

When the package arrived at Liam’s door two days later, he didn’t recognize the sender. Just the title printed neatly across the brown paper.

He opened it slowly, careful not to tear the wrapping. The same book. The same cover.

Inside, a slip of paper  this time not his handwriting, but hers.

One line.

“To remember what you couldn’t say.”

He sat still for a long time. The room, once silent, now pulsed with everything he’d tried to bury.

It wasn’t a message meant to reopen anything.

It wasn’t forgiveness, either.

It was acknowledgment.

A shared silence, handed back.

He leaned back in his chair, the faintest smile breaking through something he didn’t know was still there. Not happiness. Not closure. Just connection  quiet, real, unfinished.

Amara didn’t wait for a response. She didn’t expect one.

Some things didn’t need replies  they just needed to exist.

She took a walk that night, through the same rain-soft streets where their story had first begun.

Everything looked the same, yet different  lighter somehow. The world had stopped feeling like a reminder of him, and started feeling like hers again.

And yet, when she passed the café  their café she found herself pausing. The lights were still warm, spilling softly onto the street. Someone was sitting by the window, reading.

She didn’t look long enough to see who.

But her chest stirred, faintly, as though the air itself remembered.

She turned away, smiling  small, knowing, free.

Somewhere, between goodbye and almost, two people had found a way to say what words never could.