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Julia O’Toole’s house, Beverly neighborhood

Britt reread the letter he’d written to Julia for the fifth time as he scratched Chewy’s head.

Ren was on the floor at his feet. The three-legged pit bull liked to curl between the legs of the kitchen table chairs. Binks, Julia’s overly independent cat, sat in his favorite spot on the windowsill, chattering at the birds in the oak tree in the backyard. And Gunpowder perched on the chair next to Britt. The parrot tilted his head like only birds and reptiles do, eyeing Britt’s handwriting as if his walnut-sized bird brain had some opinions about what was written.

For a week, Britt had been part of Julia’s life in a way he’d never imagined. Been part of her world in a way that only made him adore her more.

She organized her closet by color. She kept an extra toothbrush in the shower. And she collected Star Wars figurines that she proudly displayed in the china cabinet instead of…you know…actual china .

She had a dozen half-dead plants spread throughout the house, which he’d tried his best to nurse back to health. She liked family photographs. The hallway to her bedroom was adorned with pictures of the O’Tooles, some posed, some candid. And she preferred records to digital music—her vinyl collection was a thing of beauty.

It was all so domestic. So homey. So… familial .

And that was before he got to her family . Her brothers were big brutes who loved slinging insults at each other. Her father was a tough old bird who mixed it up with his sons like he was decades younger than he was. And her mother? Well, somehow, despite being as petite and perfect as Julia herself, Nora O’Toole ruled over all of them with an iron hand encased in velvet.

The O’Tooles were big and boisterous and bonded. They loved each other so easily and so deeply and so thoroughly that he couldn’t help being a little envious.

However, hard on the heels of that envy came fear. Always fear.

Fear for what would happen to them should tragedy strike. Fear for the depths of the grief they’d suffer, the magnitude of the pain they’d be forced to endure should life do what life always does and end for one of them.

That thought alone was enough to have a pit forming in his stomach and a cold fist squeezing his heart. That thought alone was enough to make him pick up his pen and sign the letter with a flourish.

You’re doing the right thing , he assured himself as he folded the sheet in half.

“Sugar tits!” Gunpowder squawked when Britt propped the note against the salt and pepper shakers in the center of the kitchen table.

Britt frowned at the bird. “I know it’s not poetry or anything. Fisher could have written it so much better. But it says the important stuff, right?”

“Chicken butt.”

“I suppose that’s better than dick breath.” He sighed, pushing up from the table to take one more tour around the house.

He was slow about it, letting his eyes and fingers drift over her things. Committing it all to memory since it would be the last time he stepped foot inside.

He held the ends of the scarf she’d draped over the side of her vanity mirror, testing the silky fabric and thinking that as soft as it was, it wasn’t nearly as soft as Julia’s skin. He smoothed the duvet cover over her bed, refusing to allow himself fantasies of joining her under it. He popped the top on her perfume bottle and lifted it to his nose. Closing his eyes, he pulled the festive scent deep into his lungs.

When he was satisfied everything was as lovely as he could make for her return, he placed the house keys her mother had given him on the kitchen table beside the letter, set Chewy in his favorite spot on the couch, and gave Ren a scratch behind the ears.

“Bye, bitch!” Gunpowder had flown in from the kitchen to perch on the back of the sofa.

“Bye bitch to you too.” Britt chuckled. But the laugh died quickly in his throat as he softly closed the door behind him and headed down the walk to the production bike he’d been riding since his own beloved Haint had been hauled out of the Michigan woods and hoisted onto a bike lift at BKI.

As he thumbed on the ignition, his heart felt heavy. The motorcycle rumbled to life, but he barely registered the healthy roar of the engine.

Binks had followed the others into the living room. Now, the cat perched in the front window, his yellow eyes watching Britt closely, his fluffy tail flicking against the glass. Two of Ren’s outdoor dog chews showed up in colorful contrast to the fading green of the grass on the front lawn. And the swing hanging from the buckeye tree—no doubt put there for when Julia’s nieces and nephews visited—swayed slightly in the breeze.

It was all so painfully ordinary, so perfectly common . Its simplicity cut deeper than any wound he’d ever taken.

It was an unfortunate twist of fate that he could long for a thing almost as much as the thought of actually having that thing scared him to death and sent him running for the hills.

The fall air was crisp and sharp with the scent of wet leaves, but it did nothing to douse the flame burning in the center of his chest. He clung to the ache, letting it radiate through him.

It was a warning. An ominous taste of what he would feel should he ever consider throwing caution to the wind and taking a chance on the kind of life, the kind of love most people sought as a matter of course.

The utter devastation he’d felt when he saw Julia take a bullet, the hours of terror he’d lived through when she’d been rushed into surgery and no one knew the extent of her injury, had proved to him that he didn’t have what it took to be… normal . To want what normal people wanted.

Because the loss associated with a normal life was just too much.

I wish I were braver , he thought. Someone who could give her what she deserves.

He wasn’t that man, though. He knew it as surely as he knew the weight of his handgun when it was fully loaded.

His fingers hesitated on the clutch as if some part of him—the part she had carved her name into—begged him to stay. But the other part, the part that knew the truth about himself, urged him to go.

As the tires rolled forward, as he left her wholesome little bungalow behind, it felt like he was leaving a piece of himself there on the lawn next to the dog chews and the whispered welcome of a life he’d never have the courage to claim.