Chapter 13

The days after his death are strange in their ordinariness.

I wake up. I shower. The water hits my shoulders—Madison's shoulders—and the body knows exactly how hot to make it. I fasten the blush lace balconette behind my back in one motion. I slide the gold bangle onto my wrist. I spritz Jo Malone at my throat. I drive to work in the Tesla and sit at Madison's desk and answer emails and join conference calls and say let's make it happen in her bright, confident voice. No one knows. No one will ever know.

But I know. The knowledge sits in my chest like a stone—not heavy enough to stop me, but always there. The boy I used to be is dead. The body on the couch is cold. The theft is permanent.

The grief for Him surfaces at strange moments. Not the body—I don't mourn the cage. I mourn the boy who lived in it. The boy who clicked his pen and talked about Seattle and drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. The boy who lay on that sagging couch the night everything changed and felt the hollow ache under his ribs—the longing that had no name. He was alone. He was always alone. And he died alone, while I was at the coast planning a future with a woman who doesn't know I exist.

The grief is a quiet ache behind my sternum. I let it sit there. I don't push it away. And slowly, over days and weeks, it recedes. Not because I've resolved it—but because the ordinary life I've built demands to be lived. Jordan texts me heart emojis. Ava wants to meet for coffee. My mother calls and I call her Mom and the guilt hums beneath the word but I say it anyway. The world keeps turning. Madison's body keeps breathing. The gold bangle stays warm on my wrist.

---

Jordan notices.

It's a Thursday evening—a week after the death, maybe two. Time has gone strange, elastic, the days blurring together. We're on the couch in my suite, the fairy lights glowing, the fountain murmuring through the cracked window. She's curled against my side, her pink hair tickling my chin, her hand resting on my stomach. The sandalwood of her perfume mixes with my Jo Malone. The combination has become the smell of home.

She's been quiet herself—painting more than usual, which is what she does when she's processing something. But tonight she shifts, tilting her head up to look at me. Her grey-blue eyes are soft but searching.

"You've been quiet lately," she says. "Quieter than usual. Is everything okay?"

The question lands, and for a moment I freeze—old reflexes, the fear of detection. But the body doesn't react. The body smiles, easy and warm. Madison's smile.

"I'm fine," I say. "Just tired. Work has been... you know. A lot."

Jordan doesn't look convinced. She never does when I deflect. She's too perceptive for that—too grounded, too attuned to the small shifts in my mood. She's noticed that I'm quieter. She's noticed that something is different. But she doesn't push. She never pushes.

"If you want to talk about it," she says, "I'm here. Whatever it is."

The guilt hums—a cold, bright note. She's offering to carry a grief she doesn't know exists. She's loving someone who isn't here. But the love hums too—warm and steady beneath the guilt. She's offering because she loves me. The person I've become. The calmer version. The more present version. Me.

"I know," I say. "Thank you. I just need... time. It's nothing serious."

The lie sits between us. Jordan studies my face for another moment, then nods. She settles back against my shoulder. Her hand resumes its idle tracing on my stomach.

"Okay," she says. "I trust you."

Three words. Simple. Unforced. And they land in my chest with the weight of everything I can't tell her.

I trust you. She trusts Madison. She trusts the woman she's been falling deeper in love with—the calmer one, the more present one. She doesn't know that the trust is built on a lie. She doesn't know that the person she's trusting is a thief wearing her girlfriend's skin.

But she also trusts me. The choices I've made. The way I've loved her. The hand I reached for first on the walk home that night. The future I said yes to on the beach. The love she's feeling—the deepening, steadying, permanent love—is for the person I've become inside this body. The guilt and the love braid together so tightly I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

I kiss the top of her head. Her hair smells like sandalwood. "I love you," I say.

"I love you too." She tilts her head up and kisses my jaw. "Whatever it is, we'll get through it. Together."

Together. The word is a gift and a wound.

---

Later, Jordan is asleep in my bed. Her breathing is slow and even, her pink hair fanned across the pillow. The duvet is tangled around her waist. One of her tattoos peeks out from under the sheet—the small bird in flight on her forearm.

I'm not asleep. I'm lying on my back, staring at the blush-pink ceiling, the fairy lights casting soft gold shadows. My hand rests on my stomach—flat, smooth, rising and falling with each breath. The gold bangle is warm on my wrist. The Jo Malone lingers on my collarbone. The body is warm and alive and mine.

The grief for Him surfaces again. Quiet. Distant. The boy who wanted this—who lay on that sagging couch and felt the hollow ache under his ribs—is gone. I remember the night he discovered the ghost form. The giddiness of it. The freedom. The way he circled his own body on the couch and felt nothing but detached, amused pity. Oh, look at him. Trapped in that cage. He never knew there was a way out.

He was me. I was him. And now he's dead, and I'm here, in this body, in this life, with this woman sleeping beside me.

The grief recedes. It always does. The ordinary life I've built demands to be lived. Tomorrow, Jordan will wake up and make coffee and kiss me good morning. Tomorrow, I'll go to work and answer emails and say let's make it happen in Madison's bright, confident voice. Tomorrow, the world will keep turning, and the body on the couch will keep growing cold, and no one will know.

The guilt hum of the theft remains—quieter than it used to be, but never gone. It will never be gone. The secret is permanent. The gap is permanent. Jordan will never know who I really am. That truth is a stone in my chest that I've learned to carry. Some days it's heavy. Some days I barely notice it. Tonight, with Jordan's breath soft beside me and the fairy lights glowing and the body warm and alive and mine, it's light enough to bear.

I close my eyes. The duvet is cool against my bare arms. My breasts rise and fall with each breath. The heart beats steady. The body is my home. My only home. And the boy who wanted this—the boy who made all of this possible—is gone. But I'm still here. I'm still her.

And somewhere underneath the grief and the guilt and the quiet, steady relief, the joy hums on.