It’s been three hundred and ninety-two days since Dominick “Sonny” Carisi went under. Not that anyone’s counting. (She’s counting. She’s got a sticky note at her desk. She updates it every morning like it’s the goddamn weather report.)
She’s become the precinct’s unofficial ray of sunshine—equal parts sarcasm and stress hormones, carrying on like her partner of five years didn’t vanish off the face of the earth with nothing but a burner phone and a muttered “I’ll be fine.”
The burner’s still in her bag. She doesn’t use it to call him. God knows that’s not allowed. But she does send things. Updates, memes, a play-by-play of Fin trying to fix the Keurig. She even took a picture of Olivia sighing and labeled it “your disappointed mom is still disappointed.” Pixelated. Blurry. Every dumb little text an anchor to something that still feels real.
She tells herself he gets them. That maybe, once a week, he checks the burner just to read her updates. She imagines him somewhere in a shitty apartment with a fake name and worse furniture, laughing at the screenshot of Rollins holding up a baby onesie she swore she wouldn’t buy.
She doesn’t let herself imagine more than that. Because it hurts. Because hope’s a muscle and hers is sprained.
⸻
Olivia leans against her desk one morning, arms crossed, voice mild.
“It’s been over a year.”
She doesn’t have to say it’s about him. She doesn’t have say she haven’t been the same. She can hear it in the gentle caution of her tone—like she’s a balloon with a slow leak and she’s trying not to pop you.
She smiles. Too big. Too bright.
“Yeah? I’ll bake him a cake when he hits the two-year mark. Think I can order a fondant ‘Congrats On Not Being Murdered’ topper?”
Olivia doesn’t laugh.
She looks away.
⸻
The call window is supposed to open between 3:00 and 3:15 AM. That’s when she leave the burner phone on the windowsill, volume on high. It never rings. It’s not supposed to. But sometimes—sometimes—she wakes up at 3:07 with her heart pounding and wonder if he almost did it. If his thumb hovered over her number, if he thought of her voice.
Last night, she slept through it.
She wakes up at 5:16 AM and realizes the phone’s screen is dark. One missed call.
2:59 AM. No message.
She sits on the floor. Right there, next to her radiator, wrapped in a blanket that still smells like the cologne he used to keep in his locker.
She cries like an old wound ripped itself open. Quiet. Gutting.
⸻
That’s the moment it breaks. Because later that same day, Sonny walks back into the precinct.
Bruised. Unshaven. Eyes locked on hers like he’s been dragging himself out of hell just to make it here. And he says—
“You still got that pineapple mug?”
Like the year didn’t happen. Like the call didn’t miss. Like he didn’t break something inside her that might never heal right.