The Shape Winter Keeps
Aubrey's Pov
The next morning, Kais apologized again. And again. And again, until the word sorry lost all meaning and became background noise.
I stood in the kitchen making breakfast for the two guests who had decided my penthouse was now a shared habitat. Clothes lay abandoned like shed skins. Work papers colonized the dining table, spilled onto the coffee table, crept up the kitchen counter. The place looked lived in in the most offensive way possible.
I hated it.
Michael and Kais were both tidy by nature—methodical, disciplined—but apparently they'd decided to run a social experiment: How far can we push Aubrey before he snaps, given he'll be the one cleaning this up anyway?
I cracked an egg harder than necessary.
Not because of the mess.
Because somehow, without asking, they'd turned my carefully controlled silence into a house full of people, noise, and apology-shaped guilt.
And I wasn't sure which bothered me more.
I was tired of their tantrums.
A pillow flew across my living room without warning, cutting through the air before slamming into the far wall. I didn't flinch, but my jaw tightened. They'd been at it for twenty minutes—circling the same argument as it might eventually bleed out.
Kais kept apologizing. To me. Over and over. Relentless enough that even I noticed it, and that was saying something. Every sorry landed heavier than the last, like he was trying to pay off a debt I hadn't asked to collect.
Michael noticed too.
He always does.
He watched Kais the way he watches a problem—quiet, patient, already halfway to the solution. And once he connected the apologies to the tension still clinging to Kais from the night before, he did what he always does when something doesn't add up.
He investigated.
Not gently. Not kindly. In his own selfish, precise way—asking questions that sounded harmless until they weren't, pulling at loose threads Kais didn't realize were showing. And then the truth slipped out.
The room went still.
Kais froze, the fight draining out of him all at once. He didn't like how exposed he suddenly felt, especially not in front of Michael, who now knew exactly where to press. That vulnerability sat badly with him. I could see it in the way his shoulders squared, like armour snapping back into place too late.
I exhaled slowly, staring at the wrecked pillow on the floor.
I wasn't angry.
I was exhausted.
My home, my silence, my carefully controlled space—turned into collateral damage for a secret that wasn't even mine. And standing there, watching them unravel in my living room, I realized how thin my patience had become.
Not enough to shout.
Enough to want them gone.
I turned off the stove.
The sudden silence did more than shouting ever could.
I picked up the spatula—still warm, faintly glossy with oil—and faced them. Michael and Kais both looked up at the same time, like they'd sensed a shift in gravity.
"Twenty minutes," I said calmly. No warning. No raised voice. "Everything back where it belongs."
I gestured once with the spatula toward the living room. The abandoned clothes. The papers are lying across my furniture.
"Or breakfast doesn't happen."
Michael blinked. Once. Processing.
Kais straightened immediately, apology halfway to his lips before he swallowed it. He nodded instead.
"Yes," they both said—almost in unison.
I leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, spatula still in my hand like a quiet threat. Not dramatic. Not aggressive. Just inevitable.
They moved fast after that.
Michael stacked papers with surgical efficiency, already sorting them into neat piles. Kais grabbed the pillow from the floor, smoothed it once, then started collecting clothes, folding as he went, like it might earn him extra credit.
I watched without intervening.
No commentary. No forgiveness.
The clock ticked.
By the time twenty minutes passed, my penthouse looked like itself again—clean lines, open space, order restored. Only then did I turn back to the stove.
Breakfast resumed.
Control, reclaimed, always tasted better than food.
The three of us stepped outside as if answering a quiet summons. Kais said it would help to change the scenery, but the world hadn't changed at all. Winter was waiting—patient, exacting, the way it always is. Snow fell in that familiar, unhurried way, each flake arriving as it knew precisely where to land. It felt fresh, sharp, almost tender. The same kind of cold that once made Ayah laugh when she tried to sketch a snowflake with numb fingers, her breath fogging the page, her eyes bright with the impossible task of capturing something that refuses to stay.
I hate winter as much as I love it. It holds her too well. In the hush of snowfall and the ache of the cold breeze, I feel her presence most—like she's just out of frame, like if I turn fast enough I'll catch her sleeve. The snow remembers her. It keeps her shape. And yet this is the season that took her from me, the same white quiet that swallowed everything I couldn't save. The beauty feels cruel that way—unapologetic, immaculate, continuing.
I walk forward because my legs know how, because time insists. I built a life with the tools left in my hands, doing it alone, not because I want to, but because there's no other way to move. Each step presses into the snow, a brief mark, already softening at the edges. I keep going. I always do. But beneath the falling white and the steady breath of winter, the truth stays with me—clear as frost, heavy as silence. I wish I had her.
I stopped mid-step.
The café was still there—almost. The windows now held shelves instead of pastries, spines of books where steam once fogged the glass. A bookstore had grown into it, quietly, carefully, like time does when it thinks you aren't watching. Yet some parts refused to let go. The counter remained. A few tables survived. The place wore its past like a scar it never bothered to hide.
And then I felt it.
Her.
Not logically. Not gently. It was the kind of feeling that doesn't ask permission. I could almost see her inside, arms open, that familiar tilt of her head like she already knew I'd come back. I imagined myself running—coat open, breath breaking, heart foolish and hopeful. For a split second, the world offered me a lie so convincing it nearly won.
My breath caught.
I stared at the café—no expression on my face, yet entirely undone inside. I stood there as if hypnotized, caught between what was real and what my mind insisted on replaying. The what ifs came flooding in, relentless and sharp. What if I had come sooner? What if I had stayed longer? What if winter hadn't been so cruel?
But Ayah wasn't inside.
She wasn't on a bench, fingers dusted with graphite, sketching a snowflake she knew would melt before she finished it. She wasn't laughing softly at her own frustration. She wasn't waiting.
She was in the clouds.
And she was six feet beneath the earth.
I felt it before I heard them—Kais and Michael exchanging that quiet look, the one that carries understanding without words. The kind of look people share when they know not to push, only to ask.
"Do you want to go inside, Aubrey?" Kais said gently.
I shook my head.
What was the purpose of going in, when the one thing that ever made that place sacred would never be there again? No book, no coffee, no echo of warmth could replace the brilliance of her smile—the way it used to light up a room before she even spoke.
The café could change its name.
It could fill itself with stories.
But the one story I came back for was already over.
We walked until distance stopped meaning anything—until the city thinned into breath and rhythm, and our legs carried us on habit alone. Winter pressed in from all sides. New York did not apologize for it. The cold here had weight, a personality, something that slid beneath your coat and settled into your bones.
"New York's winter can be harsh," Kais muttered, a faint shiver betraying him even as he tried to sound unaffected.
Michael didn't comment. He simply reached into his pocket and held out a heat pack, unopened. He never used them himself. The cold had long ago stopped negotiating with him, and he had learned to coexist with it.
"Want to head home?" he asked, voice steady, practical.
Kais hesitated, then glanced at me. "I'm fine either way. What about Aubrey?"
Their attention landed on me, soft but expectant. I considered the question carefully, the way you do when you already know the answer but need to hear it aloud.
"Me too," I said finally. "I'm fine either way. But I wanted to go somewhere before heading home—if you guys don't mind."
Neither of them asked where. Neither of them asked why.
"Sure," they said at the same time.
There was a brief pause.
Then both of them grimaced in identical irritation, exchanging a look of mild disgust at how synchronized they'd become. For a moment, the heaviness lifted—just enough for something like normalcy to slip through.
And we kept walking, the city breathing around us, the snow listening as if it already knew where I was going.