Gracie looped the Christmas ornament over the end of the tree I’d chopped down, her eyes glittering. The decoration was one she’d made herself at school, out of toilet paper roll, glitter, and marker. My heart ached with how proud she was of it. “It took all day to get the glue to dry,” she’d told me.

“It’s beautiful, Gracie,” I told her, leaning against the couch.

The tree was a shimmering specimen before us, completely decorated after nearly two hours. My head was becoming bleary with my third drink of whiskey. I hadn’t been sure why, but since Serena had left, I’d been feeling the urge to drink more than normal—to quell the feeling of loneliness, perhaps.

It didn’t matter. I knew it didn’t. Serena would eventually disappear out of my brain, fall away into a pool of memory. Soon, I wouldn’t remember that unique way she’d smelled. I wouldn’t remember the gorgeous way she kissed, the way she reached for my waist and slipped her fingers along it, gazing into my eyes.

I collapsed into the couch cushions, watching as Gracie scampered into her room, drawing together her coloring supplies. She perched at the edge of her little art table, drawing large, thick lines with her crayons. Reaching into my pocket, I drew out my cellphone, conscious that I hadn’t remembered to charge it for several days.

With a lurch, I realized: during that time, Serena might have texted me. She might have said…

Everything that had remained unsaid, when we’d stupidly, foolishly abandoned the beautiful flower that had begun to bloom between us.

But no. What did I want her to say? That she wanted to return to me, to live in my shoddy cabin in the middle of the woods? To abandon the life she’d built back in the city, the only one she’d ever known, simply because I couldn’t exist in the real world?

Never, in my years as a bounty hunter, had I imagined a predicament like this. A predicament like love. I’d never thought of love as anything more than a foolish man’s game.

Regardless, I pressed the charging cord into the phone and waited, watching as the light flashed onto the screen. Gracie hummed to herself in the other room, a Christmas tune I couldn’t place.

As seconds ticked past, I waited, hoping for a notification from Serena. But there was only a single message from Gracie’s elementary school teacher. “Happy Holidays!” it read. “See you back at school on January 4.”

Damn.

I flung the phone against the back cushion of the couch, grateful that it didn’t ricochet to the ground and alarm Gracie. My heart hammered in my chest, angry and volatile. I felt akin to the 20-something man who’d brooded, roaming across the continent without a single person to call his own. The me who was no longer me at all. At least, I thought I’d left him behind.

“Hey, Gracie?” I called, my voice gritty.

“Yes, Daddy?”

“Get your teeth brushed. You’re heading to grandma and grandpa’s in the morning, remember?”

“Five more minutes?” she asked, her voice high-pitched and pleading.

“Now, Gracie.”

Reluctantly, she put her crayons down.

Going through the motions of the next half hour, I brushed Gracie’s blond curls and tucked her into her bed. I read her a story, almost sleepwalking—and feeling like a shit father, who knew all the right words to say, but who said them without a moment of feeling.

As I closed the door to her bedroom, I reached for the bottle of whiskey on the far counter, lurching it back. The liquid was harsh and fiery against my tongue. I grunted, stepping out onto the porch and staring out into the blackness. The lake reflected the darkness of the sky and the glittering stars above. For a moment, I pretended Serena was there. I imagined her beside me, gripping my fingers, holding onto me tight.

But she wasn’t coming back.

As soon as I’d thought it, the visualization of her dissolved beside me. I stepped to the right, standing where she’d “been.” I felt nothing beneath my boot.

While Gracie was gone, I resigned myself to many days alone. I resolved to sit on the porch of my cabin, and feel the weight of loneliness pressing down on my chest. I would fall into a stupor, with drink, and I would chop wood and build a fire and stare into the flames. I was going to purge Serena from my brain, and find solace in being alone once more.

I’d been alone all my life, until Gracie. She was the only life force I needed.

As I guzzled the last of my whiskey (knowing to stop when the lake and the sky had begun to shimmer and grow bleary before my very eyes), I resolved to start the next year fresh, anew. Perhaps I’d build onto the cabin, restructure a second story throughout the beginning of the winter months. I’d formulate a new, more realistic plan without Serena.

I would be alone, and it would be better. It would be right. There was a reason I hadn’t allowed this to happen before. And there was a reason I was stamping it out, now, for good.