Forever to Lose (Book Three)

Chapter One - The Week Without Her

Hailee

One Week Later

The Atlanta house didn't feel like home.

It felt like a hotel someone walked out of mid-stay — the lights still warm, the furniture still placed just so, the air smelling faintly of someone else's perfume.
That wrong kind of stillness.

Not peaceful quiet.
Vacant quiet.
The kind that seeps into drywall and sits heavy on your lungs.

The diffusers Sophie bought in bulk — lavender, lemon, bergamot — didn't soothe anything.
They just wrapped the silence in perfume, like dressing a wound but not stopping the bleeding.

Fallon's things weren't here.

Her boots weren't crooked by the door from where she kicked them off because she "couldn't be bothered to aim."
Her jacket wasn't hanging off the bannister like it had tried to escape gravity and lost.
Her toothbrush wasn't leaning slightly to the left in the holder next to mine.
Her laugh wasn't echoing faintly from the hallway — that warm, smoky sound she only made when Sophie annoyed her on purpose.

And her dog tags weren't warm against my collarbone, brushing my skin when she wrapped her arms around me from behind and whispered against my neck:

"Stop worrying. I'm here."

But she wasn't here.

It was just me.

Me and the ring.
Me and the silence.
Me and the hoodie I stole from her laundry pile because it still smelled like her.

Warm.
Sharp.
Comforting in a way that hurt.

The SUV rolled into the driveway and my chest tightened again — the kind of tightness that feels like breathing around a fist.

Rae was already outside my door before Myles even put the car in park.

"Clear," she murmured, but she didn't relax. Her eyes continued sweeping the street, the hedges, the neighbour's porch, like danger could be hiding behind hydrangeas.

Myles stepped out the other side and scanned the area with a precision that made my skin prickle.

"South perimeter secure."

He didn't smile.
He never did.

Fallon liked that about him — said it meant nothing surprised him.
Said he was "built for vigilance."

I used to joke she said that about herself too.

"Thanks," I whispered.

Rae nodded. Myles didn't. Both moved into formation around me as I walked toward the door — a formation Fallon had drilled into them: one ahead, one behind, one at ten o'clock, one at two.

They weren't just security.

They were Fallon's orders.

The front door opened before I reached it — Myles clearing corners, checking shadows, doing the same sweep Fallon always did. I stepped in, and the moment I crossed the threshold—

The silence swallowed me whole.

It always did.

⸻

Sophie's voice cut the quiet like a blade.

"I don't care what the report says," she snapped into her phone. "'Insufficient evidence' doesn't mean 'stop working the case.' It means 'try harder.' Try. Again."

She hung up so violently Florence jumped and dropped her spoon into the Nutella jar.

Flo looked at me and her entire expression softened, her brows pulling together in that gentle, worried way she only ever looked at Fallon.