The Things We Don’t Say Out Loud

CHAPTER FOUR

POV: Zara

Don’t.

She replayed it all night.

Not the word itself. The way he’d said it. Like he was talking to himself as much as her. Like it cost him something to get it out. She’d gone to bed at ten, stared at the ceiling until two, and woken up at seven feeling like she hadn’t slept at all.

The unknown number hadn’t texted again.

She almost wished it had.

At least then she’d have something concrete to be upset about instead of this, whatever this was. This low hum. This awareness that had settled under her skin like a second heartbeat she hadn’t asked for.

She picked up her phone. Tried Ryan again.

It rang four times and then ”Babe. Hey. Sorry, signal’s been terrible up here.”

His voice was warm and familiar and she held onto it like a rope. “Hey. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I know, I’m sorry. How’s it there? Still snowing?”

“Yeah. Roads are still closed.”

“You doing okay alone?”

She paused. One second. “Damon’s here. Marcus got stuck at your dad’s before the storm hit.”

Silence on Ryan’s end. Not long. Just noticeable.

“Damon’s there with you? Alone?”

“He was already staying the weekend, his apartment was being fumigated. It’s fine, Ryan.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

But something in his voice had changed. She heard it. The careful neutral that men used when they were anything but.

“It’s fine,” she said again. Firmer.

“Okay.” A breath. “I’ll try to get there as soon as the roads open. I miss you.”

“Miss you too.”

She hung up and sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her thumbs into her eye sockets and breathed.

It’s fine.

He was on the phone when she came downstairs. Standing by the window, back to the room, voice low.

She heard I know and it’s not like that and then a longer silence where he was listening and whatever was being said on the other end made his shoulders tighten.

She went quietly to the kitchen. Gave him the room.

Five minutes later he came in. Set his phone on the counter face down. Said nothing.

She put a mug of coffee in front of him without being asked.

He looked at it. Then at her. “Camille called.”

“Okay.”

“She asked who was here with me.”

Zara kept her voice even. “What did you say?”

“The truth. That you were here. That Marcus got stuck.” He picked up the coffee. “She said okay.”

“But?”

“But it wasn’t an okay okay.” He looked out the window. “You know the kind.”

She knew the kind. Ryan had used that exact kind twenty minutes ago.

They stood in the kitchen in the grey morning light and didn’t talk about what that meant. Two people whose partners had just asked the same unspoken question and neither of them had answered it. Not really.

“I found bacon in the freezer,” she said.

His mouth curved. Just slightly. “Okay.”

“Don’t make it weird, I’m feeding us.”

“I’m not making it anything.”

“You were about to say something.”

“I really wasn’t.”

She pointed the spatula at him. He raised both hands. And just like that the weight lifted enough to breathe and she turned back to the stove and he sat at the island and the morning became something manageable again.

She burned the first batch.

“Not a word,” she said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking loudly.”

“Zara I am sitting here completely silent—”

“Damon.”

He pressed his lips together. Eyes bright. She could see him holding it in and it made her want to laugh and she didn’t because she’d never hear the end of it.

She made a second batch. Didn’t burn it. Slid a plate in front of him with more force than necessary.

He took one bite. Looked up. “This is actually really good.”

“Obviously.”

“You’re so—” he stopped.

She looked at him. “What?”

“Nothing.” He looked back at his plate. Picked up his fork.

“Finish the sentence.”

“I said nothing.”

“You started a sentence and stopped in the middle, that’s not nothing, what were you going to say?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then, without looking up — “I was going to say you’re so much like your mum.”

Something soft moved through her chest. Unexpected. She hadn’t seen that coming and from the slight tension in his jaw neither had he.

Her mum had passed three years ago. Cancer. Fast and brutal and final. Marcus had taken it loudly, she was his everything, watching her slip away slowly with no way to help wrecked him, his grief that filled every room. Zara had taken it quietly, which everyone seemed to mistake for being okay.

Damon had come to the funeral. Had sat in the back. Had said very little. But he’d shown up every week for two months afterward, brought food, fixed things around the house, been present without making it about himself.

She’d never told him what that meant to her.

“She burned the first batch too,” Zara said quietly. “Every single time. Never learned.”

He smiled. A real one. The rare kind, the one that reached his eyes, and she felt it land somewhere it shouldn’t.

“I know,” he said. “She fed me that burnt bacon more times than I can count.”

Zara laughed. It surprised her, the laugh. It came up from somewhere genuine and she couldn’t stop it and he laughed too and for a moment they were just two people who’d loved the same woman and missed her and it was simple and real and nothing else.

Then it faded.

And the quiet came back.

And it was a different kind of quiet than before.

The text came at three in the afternoon.

Same unknown number. Two words this time.

“Ask him”.

Zara stared at it. Heart in her throat. “Ask him what?” she typed back immediately.

This time the reply came fast.

“Why he really came this weekend. It wasn’t the fumigation.”

She read it three times.

Set the phone face down on her thigh.

Across the room Damon was stacking wood beside the fireplace, sleeves pushed up, completely unaware. She watched him and thought about the fumigation story and realized she’d never actually questioned it. Never asked Marcus about it. Never wondered why Damon had shown up for a random birthday weekend with a bag big enough for three days before the storm even started.

She’d just accepted it.

It wasn’t the fumigation.

“Damon,” she said.

“Mm.” Still stacking.

“Why did you come this weekend?”

He stopped. Hands still on the wood. A beat too long before he set it down and turned around.

His face was careful. Controlled. The kind of controlled that took effort.

“What?”

“This weekend. Why did you come?” She kept her voice calm. Steady. “Marcus said your apartment needed fumigating.”

Something moved behind his eyes. There and gone.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

“Is it?”

The fire crackled. Outside the wind pushed hard against the windows and the whole house seemed to lean in.

He looked at her for a long moment. Long enough that she felt her pulse in her fingertips.

Then he said — “Who’ve you been talking to?”

And the way he said it told her everything.

The fumigation was a lie and whoever was texting was right.

He’d come on purpose.