The sky had begun to dim, not yet fully dark but deepening from white to pale indigo. Smoke rose from the chimneys in soft spirals, dissolving into the cold air. Somewhere below, laughter floated up faintly through the house's wooden frame.
Darcy stood near the window. Micah lay across the bed behind him.
Darcy looked at Micah with quiet caution. It wasn't guilt sitting in his chest. He had long since made peace with what had happened, or at least, he had convinced himself he had. And it wasn't anger either. The anger had burned hot once, in other lifetimes, in other endings. What remained now was something colder.
But that was exactly why he didn't want to open the door Micah had just nudged. Talking about the past was never just talking.
It meant peeling back layers. It meant naming things that had been buried on purpose. It meant looking at each other and acknowledging the ugly parts, the resentment, the unfairness, the choices that could never be undone.
