warnings: this chapter contains strong themes of grief and mentions unhealthy coping mechanisms. reader discretion is advised.
forty | forty-one | forty-two
Y/N didn’t cry much after that night.
Not because it didn’t hurt anymore — but because the pain had settled into something colder, something quieter. The hurt became a folded up little thing she could tuck into her pocket like a gum wrapper, the kind of thing you could carry around without anyone noticing.
She became quieter too – though not in any obvious way.
She still smiled at customers. Still made the drinks just the way people liked them. Still answered questions in class and turned in assignments on time. But everything was... dulled. Worn thin. Like the brightness had been turned down on the world and she didn’t know how to turn it back up again.
She spent most of her time at the café now, each of her shifts starting sooner and ending later than the one before.
Her coworkers noticed the change.
The Y/N they knew — the one who used to hum while she brewed espresso, who always snuck an extra cookie to the regulars and let the college kids study past closing — was quieter now, tired in a way concealer couldn’t fix.
“You should go home,” Susie tried gently on her way out one night as she watched Y/N wipe the already-clean counters for the second time. “You’ve been here more than twelve hours.”
“I’m fine,” she waved her off, not looking up. And she was, really.
She wore clean clothes, answered emails, turned in assignments. She smiled when people expected her to.
She certainly functioned.
Yet there was a wall now — thick and soundproof — between her and the girl she used to be. The one who’d looked at him and seen safety instead of danger. The one who’d kissed a man she didn’t know was capable of murder.
That girl was gone. In her place stood someone quieter, someone less trusting. This new version of her flinched every time the front door creaked open at the café and had to see the face before she could breathe again.
He hadn’t come back.
Not yet.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
She didn’t know what she wanted more — for him to stay gone, or to show up and give her a reason to let him back in. What hurt more than the lies, more than the betrayal, more than the night she held a knife in her shaking hand was the part of her that still wished it could go back.
Not to fix it, not to forgive – just to freeze the moment before it all broke, when she still believed the man who held her was just a little strange, but still safe.
Still hers.
Soon after, Y/N stopped coming home before dark. Started spending longer hours at the café, telling herself there was always something else to do — inventory, supplier calls, mop the floors again even though they were clean. She picked up more shifts than she needed. Said yes when her professor asked if anyone wanted to stay after and help sort research journals.
She told herself she was moving on.
Unfortunately for her, however, everything in her life was still steeped in his memory.
There was the mug he’d dubbed as his own still in her cupboard, their throw blanket bunched on the couch where they’d up napping one way or another. There was still the half-read book on the nightstand that he’d teased her about, still dog-eared on page 214. She couldn’t be certain if his fingerprints remained embedded anywhere in her apartment, but somehow, she could feel them.
Y/N could’ve sworn they were still there.
She didn’t delete his number. She didn’t throw away the hoodie he left or scrub the memory of his laughter from her walls.
That would’ve meant acknowledging what happened.
And when she finally did come home — late, exhausted, too numb to think — she kept the lights low, brushed her teeth in silence, and crawled into bed without looking at the spot beside her.
The spot where he once slept.
He had taken something good — something pure — and twisted it with lies.
And now she was left sorting through the pieces of something she couldn’t fix, because she didn’t know what was true anymore. What memories were hers to keep, and what had been built on deception from the beginning.
It had felt real. And that’s what made it unforgivable.
At first, it was just a notification – one missed call from a familiar name lighting up her screen like a wound.
Frozen in some sort of trance, she simply stared at it until it stopped ringing.
Then came the texts.
liam!: Please.
liam!: Just tell me your okay?
liam!: I’m not asking you to forgive me. I just need to know your safe.
Read 12:55 AM
liam!: Y/N.
liam!: I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.
liam!: You don’t have to respond. But I’ll still always be sorry.
Read Yesterday
She didn’t block him. She told herself it was so he’d know she was alive, so he’d stop worrying, so he wouldn’t show up.
But as fate would have it, he didn’t stop.
liam!: I shouldn’t of lied
liam!: I don’t really know how to be who you needed. I just wanted to be near you
liam!: You made me feel like I was more then the worst thing I’ve done
liam!: Please let me explain. Please can I talk to you
liam!: I can’t sleep. Can’t think strait
liam!: I miss you
Read 11:57 PM
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t block him. She couldn’t. She told herself it was because she wanted proof — a paper trail in case she needed to file something, explain something. But the truth was simpler.
She wasn’t ready to let go.
So she watched as the texts came in. One after the other.
liam! : Please talk to me
liam! : I didn’t know how to tell you. I never wanted you to find out like that.
liam! : I'm sorry
liam! : I miss you
liam! : Please. Just tell me youre ok
She didn’t answer. Not once.
But against her better judgement, she read every word.
She held her phone in her hand some nights, thumb hovering over the keyboard like maybe, just maybe, this time she’d respond. Maybe just one message. Just to say stop. Or I’m alive.
But she never did.
She’d walk into the café and feel her phone vibrate against her thigh and know it was him. Her thumb hovered over his name more times than she’d ever admit — but she never replied.
It only took a certain amount of concentration, she found, to not focus on the barrage of texts she knew awaited her the moment she would unlock her phone. So really, if she just focused on trying new recipes for the cafe or starting books she’d been meaning to read or walking Kika’s dog while she was out of town, then she wouldn’t have to even acknowledge the existence of those texts until she put her stupid phone on charging each night.
It was simple enough – stay busy, and she could go on pretending Lando never even existed.
Perfect.
The first call came two days after she told him to leave.
She didn’t answer it.
The screen lit up with his name — liam!, the way she’d saved it back when she still believed that’s who he was — and her hand hovered above the phone for just a second too long before she let it go dark.
He called again the next night.
And the night after that.
Eventually, he stopped leaving voicemails. Maybe he realized she wasn’t listening to them. Or maybe he couldn’t stand hearing his own voice echo into a void.
So he continued texting instead. AT least those, he knew, she read.
At first, they were long. Apologetic. Rambling things she never read fully. Things like “Please just let me explain,” and “I never meant for you to find out like that,” and “I swear, I didn’t plan any of it. Not with you.” He told her he missed her. That he couldn’t sleep. That the bed didn’t feel right without her.
She didn’t reply.
The messages kept coming anyway.
Over time, they got shorter. Less coherent. Frustrated.
liam!: I know you’re reading these.
liam!: Please.
liam!: Say something.
liam!: Anything.
liam!: I don’t care if you scream at me.
liam!: I just need to hear your voice.
Read Sunday
Eventually, she stopped looking at them at all.
But still — her phone buzzed at night. Sometimes just once. Sometimes over and over, until she had to silence it and shove it in a drawer just to breathe.
She never blocked him.
She told herself it was because she wanted evidence, just in case. Because cutting him off completely would’ve been stupid, unsafe.
But the truth was much crueler: perhaps some part of her wanted to know he was still trying.
The first time, she thought she was imagining the soft, hesitant knock at the door of her apartment at 11:47 PM. In the middle of getting ready for bed (or at least trying to), she just froze in place. She just stood there in the hallway, staring at the door like it might open itself.
Then it came again – softer this time, like he was worried about waking her, even now.
“Y/N?” His voice was low, broken. “I just… I wanted to say this in person.”
She backed away slowly, hand covering her mouth, breath caught in her throat.
Please, go. Just leave me alone.
How much more are you going to hurt me?
“I know ’m the last person you want to see. I know I don’t deserve anythin’ from you. But I meant every word I said. Every morning. Every night. Every, like, stupid inside joke. That– that wasn’t fake. That was me. Fuck, I swear to god– It’s me.
‘S the only real part I’ve got left.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I don’t regret meeting you,” he whispered, almost like these words were meant more for himself than for her.
“I regret what I did to you. What I hid. But never you.”
Please, she begged. Please just go.
He did, eventually. Hours passed before she heard the sound of his footsteps retreating, before she finally felt like she could breathe again.
Only for him to be back the next night.
Some nights he just knocked and called her name softly, on to leave after he got no response in return. Other nights, he sat outside her door for over an hour, saying nothing. She could hear the way he shifted, the soft sound of his back resting against the wall. If she listened closely enough, she could even hear the occasional crack in his breathing like maybe he was crying again and trying not to.
It took everything in her not to open the door.
There were a few nights where her willpower waned, her hand hovering over the handle. Sitting there, directly opposite to where he sat on the other side of the door, her body would ache with the memory of him — the once-familiar weight of his arm around her, the warmth of his breath on her neck, the way he used to say her name like it mattered.
Like she mattered.
It became a pattern after that – not every night, certainly not enough to be predictable. But it happened often enough that she started to expect it.
Sometimes he talked. Sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he sat there for five minutes, like just being near her was enough.
Once, she found him curled up against the door the next morning, fast asleep, as if the last thing he said had knocked the breath out of him and he hadn’t found the strength to leave.
She didn’t open it.
But she slid down to the floor on the other side and cried quietly into her sleeve. She cried herself sick, her own body torn between being repulsed by his betrayal and needing to be in his arms again like it was oxygen.
She could only cry harder when she remembered the way he kissed her shoulder when she fell asleep on the couch. The way he brewed her favorite tea before she asked. The way he laughed like he didn’t belong to a world so dark, even though he did.
She wanted to believe he could still be that person, but the truth was that he hadn’t lied about loving her. He’d lied about everything else.
And no amount of heartbreak could make that okay.
On Thursday, she came home late, like always. The hallway smelled like floor cleaner and whatever her neighbors must have cooked dinner, and the lights above her door flickered like they always did.
Y/N stepped forward to open her door, looking down to reach for her keys when–
Lando?
There he was, slumped on the floor just outside her apartment, that familiar mop of curls resting against the doorframe, his arms limp at his sides.
He stood as soon as he heard her.
“Y/N—”
Her keys trembled in her hand. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she only gave him one long look – whether it was out of hatred or heartbreak, he couldn’t quite tell.
A moment later, she just turned around, and walked back down the stairs, needing to be anywhere but there.
When she returned, Lando was no longer there. Unsure of what she felt was relief or disappointment, she’d nearly missed the small, brightly coloured sticky not stuck to her door.
But she wasn’t so fortunate. Memories of studying late at night, passing note back and forth with him on sticky notes much like this one to help pass the time. Reminders like i’ll take out the trash when i come by tonight or can we get the yogurt covered berries again? stuck to her refrigerator door, evidence of the way their lives had begun to overlap.
It made her angry. It made her furious, in fact, and for no real reason other than the fact that it was yet another reminder of him.
Y/N didn’t hesitate to ignore it in favor of pushing her door open and letting herself in, leaving the note to fall gracefully on her doorstep, unread.
It was nice seeing you today.
Sometimes when he showed up outside her door he’d talk — softly, like he thought she might be listening. Sometimes he told her stories about the café, little things he remembered, like the time she burned a whole batch of scones and tried to pass them off as “toasted." Other times he talked about his past, things she never knew. The kind of confessions that sounded like he was bleeding them out. That maybe no one else had ever heard.
And sometimes, he just sat there in silence.
One night, she heard a quiet thud and opened the peephole to see him curled up beside her door.
Asleep.
His body had gone lax like it’d given up out of sheer desperation, merely succumbing to the exhaustion of some invisible weight on his shoulders. In fact, he didn’t look relaxed at all, if the dark circles under his eyes were any indication. He’s frame had also gotten scrawnier, as if maybe he hadn’t been eating well.
For a moment, a faint memory of warm food delivered at her doorstep flashed in her mind, but it went away just as quickly as it had appeared.
It’s not like that. He’s probably eating just fine. Don’t be stupid.
As she stood on the other side of that door, she tried quite desperately to convince herself of all sorts of perfectly reasonable things – that she should open the door to kick him out again, that she should shout at him, that she call the cops like she’d threatened to and tell them that he was harassing her.
With her thumb hovering over the call button, the tear that slipped down her cheek and dripped onto her phone screen only confirmed the same cursed truth she’d been doing everything in her power to hide from.
That she simply couldn’t.
Because every night she came home and saw him there — wrecked, waiting — it took everything in her not to fold and forgive him, right then and there. It took everything in her not to remember the way he used to hold her like the world didn’t exist beyond the two of them.
Despite the twisting sensation in her chest, she still didn’t open the door — all because remembering what they were was easier than facing what he was.
It was overcast when she went.
Not raining, but the kind of heavy gray that made the whole world feel muted — like even the sky had the decency to keep its voice down. The cemetery was quiet. Clean. Rows of headstones lined up like a frozen library of stories no one would ever finish reading.
Y/N didn’t come here often.
Not because she didn’t miss Margot. But because every time she stepped between those stones, it reminded her that Margot was really, truly gone. There was no text waiting. No sarcastic note on the café register. No spare bobby pins or blister Band-Aids tucked into Y/N’s apron pocket without asking.
Just a name carved into cold stone.
And now she needed her more than she had in months.
Y/N didn’t bring flowers. Margot would’ve hated that. She wasn’t the type to coo over daisies or pretend roses fixed anything. She would’ve rolled her eyes and said, “If you’re gonna visit me, at least bring gossip.”
So Y/N brought a coffee instead. – hot and with no cream, just the way Margot used to drink it.
She found the grave — small, simple, covered with pebbles and a few crumpled flowers from someone else who remembered. She sat cross-legged in the grass across from the headstone, carefully setting the coffee beside it.
She looked down at the grass, chewing the inside of her cheek until it hurt.
“Hey,” she whispered, voice raw from disuse. “Sorry it’s been a while.”
The breeze stirred the dead leaves behind her. The silence filled the space between heartbeats.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and sat beside the grave.
“I miss you.”
The words came out cracked. Smaller than she meant them to.
“I know that’s not news or anything, but…” She shrugged. “It’s getting harder. Not easier. You always said heartbreak’s just grief that’s still breathing, and I didn’t get it until now. Except this time I don’t even know if I’m grieving the person or the lie.”
Y/N let out a long, shaky breath as she looked down at her hands.
“I don’t know who else to talk to about this.”
She swallowed hard.
“I found out Liam’s not Liam,” she said, quietly. “His name’s Lando.”
Her voice wavered, but she didn’t try to stop it. The words some to spill out now, bubbling over into the silence that finally held enough space to hold what she’d been keeping in for so long. The emotions poured out, hitting her like a wave, winding her with their realized intensity.
“Can you believe it? I fell in love with a liar. With a… with a fucking killer, Marg. A- A mob boss. The mob boss. The one they talk about on the fuckin’ news!
The one who was there the night you died.”
Her throat clenched so hard she had to stop and force herself to breathe.
“I told him to get out. I meant it. I still do.”
She closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against her clasped hands. Angry tears escaped from the corners of her eyes, warm as the rolled down the cold skin of her cheeks. Hastily, she tried to wipe them away, like doing so would somehow wipe away this deep, burning frustration she felt.
It did no such thing.
The heat of her anger spread through her chest, heating up her flesh until she could feel it. What bothered her even more was how, deep down, she knew this anger wasnt directed at him.
It was directed at herself.
“I meant it, but… I fell for him. I fell so hard. Like, I keep thinking about how he used to stay on the phone with me until I fell asleep, remember? When the insomnia was really bad. Or– Or that time I had a panic attack before the final and he just- he sat outside my class building for three hours, like he didn’t have anything else to do until he knew I was okay.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“And he’d help me study. He’d bring me snacks, too. He’d even let me nap on him when I was too wired to lie down alone. It was like- Like he made it feel easy to breathe, even when everything else felt too loud, y’know?”
Only silence answered in return. A bird chirped somewhere nearby, small and defiant.
Y/N drew in a breath, steadying herself.
“I keep thinking about what you’d say. If you were here, what would you tell me to do? Would you tell me to forget him? To hate him? Because every time I think his name, it hurts. Like, it actually physically hurts.” Her hand pressed lightly to her chest. “Because every time I see him… my brain doesn’t think, like, mob boss or liar or- or murderer.”
Her throat tightened, but she forced the words out anyway.
“It just thinks him. The man who held my hand when my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The man who stayed up with me when I couldn’t sleep. The one who helped me color-code my exam notes even though he couldn’t care less about tort reform. The one who—” Her voice cracked. “The one who believed I could actually make it into law school.”
Tears welled up again, but she didn’t fight them this time. After all, maybe this grief would be all she ever had left of him.
“He had this crazy dream that I could do it. That I’d make it. Even when I didn’t believe it myself. He’d sit next to me on the couch and highlight things he didn’t understand just so I wouldn’t feel alone.”
She looked at the headstone.
“I think he really loved me, Margot,” she dared to whisper, the confession fracturing something in her.
She swallowed.
“And I think that’s what’s killing me the most.”
She leaned her head against her knees, curling into herself as the cold seeped deeper into her skin. The grass was damp beneath her boots. Her hands were shaking.
“I don’t know what to do.”
The wind stirred gently through the trees, soft and slow.
“I don’t know how to stop missing him.”
Y/N wiped her face roughly, smearing an ugly mix of tears across her face. It made her feel worse, and that only made her want to cry more.
“I hate him for that, you know? For being the one who believed in me most. For making me want things I didn’t even know I was allowed to want.”
She looked down at the headstone.
“If you were here… what would you say? Would you tell me to push him away?”
She reached out and traced Margot’s name with trembling fingers. The wind picked up again, rustling the trees behind her like applause in reverse. Y/N sat there a while longer, eyes closed, forehead bowed.
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“But I don’t think you would.”
She blinked fast. Her throat burned.
“I think you’d say you get it. That you’d tell me I’m not crazy for still loving him even when everything in me is screaming not to.”
She swallowed, her jaw trembling.
“Because I do. Love him, I mean. I wish I didn’t, but I do. And it hurts, Margot. It hurts because all I see is what he did. All I feel is that betrayal, sitting in my chest like it’s going to split me open.”
Her fingers curled into the dirt beside her. Anchoring herself.
“But when I see him... when I hear his voice, or think about the way he used to look at me — like I was his safe place — I can’t un-feel it. I can’t un-know how much I loved him. How much I still do.”
She wiped at her eyes roughly, like she could scrub the ache away.
“And I hate that, Margot. I hate that he still owns that part of me. Because I don’t know how to forgive it. I don’t know if I can.”
Silence followed. There was only the wind, gentle enough to not knock over the now-cold cup of coffee that remained her only company as she let herself finally feel it all.
Hours seemed to pass as Y/N sat there, letting herself miss them both, and wondering which ghost hurt more to love.
a/n: so i know i promised this chapter literal ages ago, but at least it's out? i really wanted to like this chapter, but i think i spent so long on it that i kind of got sick of, so... yeah. not really my favorite work i've put out, but at least it something. hopefully it's still the quality angst you guys deserve :)
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---
The book was already bursting with prints, blurry friends, smiling people, silly faces, caught in the middle of talking, completely unaware, drinking. Soap pulled at the corner of the page and slowly turned it, both he and Ghost enraptured at drifting their gazes across the collection.
The feeling of warmth sprouted in Ghost’s chest as he looked at them all, and he couldn’t hold back the small smile that inched its way across his face. Soap chuckled and pointed out a few ones, adding his own flowery commentary.
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