Free Web NovelChapter 11: WAS HE GOING TO RETURN IT?
Chapter 11
Lumi
He said goodnight at the door the same way he quietly did everything else.
I nodded, stepped inside and listened to his bike pull away down the road until the sound faded into the dark.
The bathroom mirror showed a face that looked less hollow than it had a week ago, I stood in front of it for a moment before I turned the shower on.
I stood under the hot water until the cold from the ride finally left my skin.
I pulled on my sleeping clothes, climbed into bed and reached for my phone to turn it face down, then I saw a message notification from an unknown number.
Below it were four words as the preview.
*Would help you sleep better.*
I stared at the screen.
I knew who it was before I even opened it, something about the timing and the lack of explanation that carried his particular signature.
I opened the message anyway and there was just a link, nothing else, no further words. I pressed it before I could talk myself out of it.
A music site loaded. A song by **Masterpiece Starr** started playing.
I pulled the phone closer.
It was a woman’s voice, low and certain. It moved in the way certain songs do, like it had been made specifically for the part of you that was still standing when everything else fell away.
The voice filled the guest room, steady and resonant.
*I looked in the glass and I didn’t see a ghost*
*I saw the version of me that I love the most*
*The hollow has filled, the shadows have fled*
*I’m silencing every word that they said*
*They’re still down there in the dark and the grit*
*Trying to find a fire they didn’t light, but I quit.*
*And the mirror clears, and I finally see*
*How far they are standing away from me*
*I’ve grown so high that I’ve touched the sun*
*And I’m forgetting their names, one by one* freewёbnoνel.com
*They can reach for my heels, they can call out my name*
*But I’m a different bird in a different game*
*I’m better now, I’m higher than the pain*
*Yes, I’ve overcome the pain.*
*And they’re just a memory lost in the rain.*
Something about the melody sat directly in my chest, the words found the places in me that had been quietly aching for days without my permission.
I understood his message loud and clear.
Even I see a weak woman in the mirror, he doesn’t see that. He sees a woman who has overcame her pains.
I lay back against the pillow with the phone resting on the blanket beside me and let it continue playing.
The tears came without warning. They slipped down the sides of my face and into my hair but I didn’t wipe them away because they didn’t feel like grief, they felt like something was releasing its grip on me slowly.
My mouth curved at the same time.
I was crying and smiling but not entirely sure which one was the truth.
Maybe both of them were.
I lay there in the quiet and didn’t know when my eyes closed.
I didn’t remember the song ending.
...
The light was wrong when I opened my eyes.
Too bright and too gold. I sat up slowly, looked at the room and then at my phone.
It was the first morning since I left London that I had slept through out the night.
I stayed still for a moment, taking stock of my own body.
My jaw wasn’t tight neither was my chest, my hands were loose at my sides on top of the covers and when I drew in a slow breath the air came all the way in without snagging on anything.
There was no hallow feeling whatsoever.
I swung my legs off the bed, my feet hit the floor.
I stood up and went for a run.
When I got back I showered again, put on clothes and went downstairs.
I cleaned the house from front to back, moving through the rooms with a purpose that felt unfamiliar but not unwelcome, like muscle memory waking up from a long sleep.
Then I prepared a proper meal. Not the bare minimum survival eating of the last several days but actual food, something with effort behind it.
I set the table, stood back, looked at it and felt something uncomplicated move through my chest.
Then I looked at the clock, went back to the kitchen and looked at the clock again.
I didn’t know why I was looking at the clock and I was doing it intentionally.
You’re waiting for him, a voice said at the back of my head. But I shut it down immediately and told myself I wasn’t doing that,
I wasn’t waiting for anyone, I actually like staying alone with
I went and sat on the sofa, picked up my phone, then set it back down again.
I looked at the clock from across the room, then stood up and went to make tea I didn’t need, just to have somewhere to put my hands. freēwebnovel.com
Twelve had come and gone but he wasn’t here yet.
He always came around the same time. Every day this week, same hour, like something regulated it.
And now it was past twelve and the street outside was quiet and there was no low rumble of a bike pulling up slowly.
I had cooked enough food for two people and set out two plates without actually deciding to.
I looked at the plates and my jaw pulled tight.
I picked up my phone and my thumb moved to the unknown number still sitting at the top of my messages.
I started typing, then stopped. I read back the four words I had put down, deleted them and put the phone face down on the table.
Then I picked it up again.
Typed three words. Deleted those too.
I set the phone down and pressed both palms flat against the table.
I breathed slowly and told myself this was not something I needed to think too much of.
Before I knew it, my fingers moved to the call log and I was dialing Neve’s number. I didn’t know what I was doing. Why was I calling Neve even though I knew she’d be busy.
It rang twice and went to voicemail.
I sat for a moment, my thumb hovering over the call button again, then I pressed it.
This time it connected after the third ring. Neve’s voice came through slightly breathless, like she had been moving.
"Sorry, sorry, it has been absolute chaos today, I was going to call you this evening, are you okay?"
Something in my shoulders dropped at the sound of her. "I’m okay," I said, and it came out steadier than I expected. "Are you?"
"Surviving." She took a deep breath before speaking again. "I saw the video."
I pressed my lips together. "Ren sends things without warning."
"Lumi." Her voice had shifted into something warmer and quieter. "You looked like yourself."
I didn’t have an answer to that, so I said nothing, she let the silence sit there between us for a moment the way only she could.
"Go out more," she said eventually. "Let him be your family while I can’t be there. He’s not as difficult as he looks."
"I’ll think about it."
"That means yes."
"It means I’ll think about it, Neve."
She made a sound that was half laugh, half exhale.
I was about to ask her something, the question had already formed itself in my mouth and was sitting on the tip of my tongue waiting, when I heard the sound.
Low and rumbling, coming up the road slow.
I stood up so fast the chair scraped the floor.
"He’s here," I said into the phone before I ended the call.
I set the phone down on the table and stood there for two full seconds with my hands at my sides.
Then I walked to the front door and opened it wide.
He was already on the path, hands loose at his sides, dark jacket, same unhurried walk.
His eyes came up to the door with the particular expression of a man expecting something specific and bracing for it slightly, because that was what I had given him every single day this week.
But I didn’t move to fill the doorway.
I stepped back from it instead, pulling it open wider. I looked at him and I let the corners of my mouth lift.
He stopped walking.
His eyes moved across my face slowly, reading it the way he seemed to read most things, carefully and without rushing.
I watched something shift behind them as he registered that I was standing at an open door with a smile on my face and neither of those things was part of the pattern he had learned.
He stood very still on the path.
I waited.
The question was right there in the air between us, written in the two seconds of stillness where he hadn’t moved and hadn’t spoken.
Was he going to return it?
