Page 119 of Beautiful Ruins

The closet door was half open, T-shirts stacked in uneven towers, the bottom drawer crammed with old comics and empty bottles. And the baseball bat we’d stolen from the PCYC one summer, when we were bored and invincible. Just so we could whack mailbox after mailbox.

I sat on the edge of the bed, the springs creaking under my weight, and ran a hand over the faded sheets. “Hey, Lo,” I whispered, my voice cracking on the last syllable. “Miss you, idiot.”

The silence that answered pressed in around me, but it wasn’t heavy this time. It was full. Packed with every argument we’d had, every late-night confession, every time he’d told me I was too stubborn or too smart or too broken for this town.

I reached for the hoodie and pressed it to my face, my fingertips going numb. It still smelled like Logan, or maybe it was just the shape of grief, and I needed something to hold on to.

“I’m okay now,” I murmured, honest for once. “You don’t have to worry anymore. I found my way back to Rowan—just like you knew I would.”

I didn’t mention the parts I was still missing, or the nights I’d woken up thinking I’d heard his laugh in the hallway. Or the way Rowan flinched every time he saw Logan’s face on my phone screen.

Some things were better left unsaid, even between the dead and the living. The same with the truth spilling out of my mother’s diary. I still hadn’t managed to read through it. Couldbarely even look at it. Maybe one day I’d be strong enough to know the depth of her betrayal. Until then, this was all the strength I had.

I cried, silent and ugly, until my eyes burned and my ribs ached.

When it was done, I placed the hoodie back on the bed, careful to smooth the sleeves flat, and stood. I wiped my face with the edge of my T-shirt.

The room didn’t feel like a tomb, or a shrine, or a punishment. It felt like a promise—that even if I left, even if we all did, Logan’s memory would keep the house upright. At that moment, that was enough.

I closed the door behind me, gently, and padded down the stairs to the kitchen, where the scent of charcoal and beer reached me before I hit the bottom step.

Rowan was already opening bottles and setting out paper plates, humming a song I recognised as the one he and Logan used to butcher when it’d come on the radio late at night while we threw darts in the backyard.

He glanced up when I entered, eyes doing the quick scan that always made me think I was in trouble, even when I wasn’t.

“You good, baby?” he said, voice low.

“Yeah.” My voice sounded foreign, but it was true. “I’m good.”

We weren’t meant to survive it—the grief, the ghosts, the guilt. But sometimes the wreckage is where the light gets in.

Even the ruins can be beautiful.