All Chapters of Forbidden collection : Chapter 71 - Chapter 79

Friday the house emptied out completely.Lydia left mid-morning for a full day of final dress fittings and a late dinner with her bridesmaids. My parents drove upstate for a long weekend with old friends. By noon it was just Grant and me and the too-quiet rooms.I stayed in my bedroom longer than usual, pretending to read. Every ordinary sound from downstairs felt amplified — the coffee maker, the back door opening and closing when he went for his run, the low murmur of a podcast he played while making lunch. Around two I finally came down because the alternative was staying upstairs until dark, which felt even more obvious.Grant was at the kitchen table with his laptop. He glanced up when I entered.“You hide up there all day?”“Trying to.”He almost smiled. “There’s sandwich stuff if you want it. I already ate.”I made something mostly for the sake of having a reason to stay in the kitchen. We existed in the same space without forcing conversation. The afternoon light moved slowly

The remaining weeks collapsed in on themselves.We got careful. We got reckless. The two things lived side by side in the same house and somehow didn’t cancel each other out.Lydia came home with fabric swatches and seating charts and a growing list of things that still needed deciding. My parents returned from their weekend and the ordinary noise of the household resumed. Grant moved through it all with the same quiet politeness he had always shown, except now every time our eyes met across a room the air between us carried the memory of the guest-room dark and the exact sound he made when he came.We found hours where we could.Late at night after everyone else had gone to bed. Early mornings before the rest of the house woke. Once, in the middle of a weekday when Lydia was at a final cake tasting and my parents were both at work, we didn’t even make it all the way upstairs. He pushed me back against the hallway wall and kissed me like he had been thinking about it since the last ti

The day shift felt louder and less personal.Different nurses came and went with efficient smiles and the same rotation of questions. Doctors rounded. Someone from physical therapy made me sit up and move my wrist through careful angles until the ache settled into a dull throb. My phone stayed quiet except for a couple of messages from my roommate asking when I’d be back to split rent. Time moved in the strange, stretched way it does in hospitals — too slow and too fragmented at once.I found myself watching the clock more than I wanted to admit.By ten-thirty the ward had started to settle. The overhead lights dimmed. The hallway traffic thinned. I told myself I wasn’t waiting. Then eleven came and the door opened with the same soft knock as the night before.Mara stepped inside carrying her tablet. She looked mildly surprised to find me still clearly awake.“You again,” she said, not unkindly. “Pain?”“Some. Mostly just not tired.”She went through the checks with the same steady ha

The fourth night carried a different weight from the start.I spent most of the day half-listening to the discharge talk. The doctor said the films looked good. Another twenty-four to forty-eight hours for observation, then I could go home if nothing changed. The day nurse smiled like it was pure good news. I nodded and signed the papers they put in front of me and watched the clock between every interruption.By the time the corridor lights dimmed I was wide awake.Mara came in at the usual time. The soft knock. The low light. The same steady checks. But the moment the door clicked shut behind her the air in the room tightened. She finished the routine without rushing, then stood at the side of the bed looking at me the way she had the night before — like she was still deciding how much further she was willing to go.“They’re talking about sending you home,” she said.“Tomorrow or the day after.”She nodded once. “That’s good.”“Is it?”The question hung between us. Mara set the tabl