Page 119 of Code of Heart

And yet…It felt wrong.

Too quiet. Too still. Too lonely.

She walked through the house in a daze, each empty room echoing with memories she didn’t want but couldn’t stopreliving. Though she had never spoken it aloud, she knew what her heart had been screaming for weeks.

She loved him. It’s why every cruel word Levi hurled at her, every moment he refused to listen, every hateful look he gave her hurt so much. She was splintering apart from the inside out.

Owen offered no details about what happened after he left her hospital room, only that Levi had been there—worried, desperate to see her—and that he had “taken care of it.” His voice was distant, painfully formal, when he confirmed that Levi had received her message…and was moving out.

She didn’t ask how long Owen had been gone before returning to her hospital room. She didn’t ask why his eyes were red or why his jaw had been clenched tight enough to crack bone. Owen was Levi’s friend before he was hers. Whatever happened in that waiting room…It appeared to have destroyedhim, too.

Now, sitting on a stool at her kitchen island, Aurelia stared at the single object left behind.

A key.

Levi had left it there, right where she had asked him to.

It gleamed faintly under the soft overhead lights, a tiny, shining symbol of everything she had lost, and everything she had chosen to let go.

But Charles’s words circled endlessly through her mind, each one cutting deeper than the last.

Everyone comes with baggage, Aurelia. But sometimes…it’s the way we carry it that makes all the difference. Don’t let fear choose for you. And don’t shut the door before he’s even had the chance to fight for you.

Her fingers curled into fists on the cold marble counter. And still…she couldn’t bring herself to move that key.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The weekend crawled by in a haze of sleepless nights and endless tears. Time lost all meaning.

Morning, afternoon, night…it all blurred together as Aurelia drifted through the motions of existing, hollowed out and numb.

The home she had poured her heart into and what once was a refuge she built for herself was as comforting as a mausoleum now. Filled with cold silence and haunted by the ghost of memories she couldn’t escape. Everywhere she turned, she found him, even though he was gone.

Physically, her body ached, every breath a painful reminder of the bruises and fractures left behind on Friday night. But worse than that was the ache in her chest. It had festered into a deep, consuming sorrow that no medication could touch.

The bedroom felt foreign, the air heavier without him in it. She wasn’t content to simply lie there alone anymore. It didn’t feel right, like a part of her had been severed and left bleeding.

She hated herself for it, but when she attempted to go in there every night, she clung to his pillow, pressing her face into the fading traces of his warm and earthy scent, desperate to hold onto what little of him remained.

Levi had flooded her phone with text after text, voicemail after voicemail all weekend, each one a reminder of the tangled mess she found herself in. She hadn’t dared open a single one—too afraid they’d be filled with more venom and anger, confirming every horrible thing she feared about herself.

Self-doubt had crept into her mind and grown like an invasive weed, causing Aurelia to question her decision. After all, she had been the one to ask for the divorce, even though she missed himmore than she could ever imagine. Maybe he hated her now, and maybe he was right to.

So, she cried in the bathroom, staring at the empty counter where his toothbrush used to rest, the shower now devoid of his things.

She wept in the closet, half of it glaringly empty.

She sobbed in the kitchen, staring at a refrigerator stocked with groceries she bought specifically for him—foods she would never eat.

Everywhere she looked, she cried.

Because everywhere she looked, he was gone.

Saturday night, when she couldn’t take the crushing silence anymore, Ivy and Grace showed up unannounced. Grace brought a pot of homemade chicken soup. Ivy carried a tub of black raspberry ice cream, Aurelia’s favorite.

The moment she saw them standing there, she fell apart all over again. They didn’t try to talk her out of it or tell her to be strong. They simply came in, held her, and sat with her in the heavy quiet.

And as much as she loved them for it, their presence only reminded her more of what she had lost. Ofwhomshe had lost. She fought it for as long as she could, but eventually the words slipped free, bleak, and vulnerable.