THE PRICE OF LETTING GO
I went to the guest room — I had moved there six months ago, and he had not said a word — and I closed the door, and I sat on the edge of the bed, and I pressed my hand over my mouth, and I breathed.
Because here was the thing about Dominic Hartley's apology.
It was real. I could hear that it was real. And it was three years too late. And some part of me — the part that had loved him in the gallery in Chelsea, the part that had believed in that surprised, real laugh — some part of me broke open a little, quietly, in the dark.
And I was not, even then, sure whether it was grief or something more dangerous.