Or destroy it.
Or attach anything to it at all.
It was just a watch.
And I was just… done.
Thursday came with soft rain and gray skies.
Fitting, somehow.
Daniel was already at the café when I arrived, seated by the window. He looked different. Lighter, maybe. Or just less guarded.
He stood when he saw me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
For a second, it felt like we might fall back into that heavy night—the confrontation, the chaos, the unraveling.
But we didn’t.
We ordered coffee.
We talked about normal things.
Work. Books. A terrible movie he’d watched the night before. The way life slowly rebuilds itself without asking permission.
At one point, he leaned back slightly, studying me.
“You look… steady,” he said.
I smiled faintly. “I worked for it.”
He nodded, like he understood exactly what that cost.
After a pause, he said, “Vanessa reached out last week.”
That caught my attention, but not in the way it once would have.
“And?” I asked.
“She apologized,” he said. “Not for the affair, exactly. For the lies. For how everything ended.”
I took a slow sip of my coffee.
“And how did that feel?”
He considered it.
“Late,” he said simply.
