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Sometimes it feels cold against her skin, like it did the first time she put it on.
Like it did that dark morning when she found it on her counter with a scrawled note.
I had to go. I’m sorry.
The star pendant shone in the dim light of dawn, mirroring the tears welling in Karen’s eyes. Of course Frank left. He couldn’t stay. She always knew that.
They tried.
They really tried.
But it was always going to end this way.
Karen knew that from the beginning, from that very first day she met Frank in the hospital. There was something pulling them towards each other, but that same unstoppable force was going to pull them apart.
She put on the necklace, the cold metal drawing goosebumps across her chest.
And she never took it off.
It’s not quite smooth. Karen finds herself touching it absently while she works, while she watches TV, any time she’s not quite thinking about it. Every time she does, the ridges in the metal remind her of the sharpness of her loss.
As if she needed the reminder. The agony of losing Frank stabs at her with every step, with every breath. She can't forget, even if she wanted to.
She keeps it under her shirt most of the time. She doesn’t want to explain what it is or where it came from. No one else needs to know.
And after months that start to turn into years, the pain starts to fade a bit. Not entirely, but enough that it doesn’t feel like she’s walking around with a gaping hole in her chest right where the star lays.
Karen starts to relax a bit, settling into her single life. She goes out with Foggy and Marci, lets them set her up with their friends, but nothing goes anywhere. If she’s honest, she doesn’t really want it to.
She’s not waiting for Frank. She knows better than to do that. For all she knows, he’s gone forever.
But of course, Frank always comes back.
This time, he shows up at her door, bruised and battered, with a sheepish look in his eyes. Karen doesn’t even think about it before she opens the door and ushers him inside. She has her first aid kit in hand before she remembers that he disappeared.
He left.
For months, years, she had no idea where he was, if he was alive, if he was ever coming back.
“You’re back,” she says softly, setting the kit down on the counter so he won’t see how badly her hands are shaking.
“I’m back,” he repeats, but he won’t quite meet her eyes.
“Why?” Karen’s voice breaks on the word and Frank’s eyes finally snap up to meet hers.
“What?”
“Why did you come back?” She’s not going to cry. She used up all her tears for Frank when he left before. Or so she thought.
“I had to,” he murmurs, stepping a little closer to her. “I couldn’t stay away.”
Karen scoffs, but the sound is watery. “You stayed away plenty.”
“I know I did," Frank says, bowing his head solemnly. "You probably have a whole life now, and I don’t want to mess that up. I just didn’t know where else to go.”
“Bull.”
Frank’s eyes widen when he raises his head again. “It’s the truth. I don’t lie to you. You know that.”
Karen doesn’t back down. “You have plenty of people to ask for help. Why did you come here, Frank?”
“You want me to go, I’ll go.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Frank’s brow furrows, and she knows he's struggling to figure out what to say. Normally, she'd try to help him out, but not today. Not after all this time.
“I’m sorry, Karen. I am. You have to know that I am.”
She does know, she can see it all over his face, but she can still feel the anger and the grief and the fear boiling through her body.
“What do you want from me, Frank?”
“Karen,” he says, face falling. “I want to come back. I want to stay.”
Karen folds her arms over her chest. She has to hold herself together somehow, and she's a breath away from giving in to him, saying yes, letting him back into her life.
“You wanted to stay before.”
Frank runs a hand over his face with a sigh. “I mean it this time. I’m done. With all of it.”
“How can I trust you?”
“You can’t. But I need you to.” He takes another step towards her, and Karen can see the bruises blooming under his skin. The blood is starting to clot in the cut on his forehead, and Karen knows she needs to treat it before it gets infected.
She reaches for the first aid kit instead of responding, nudging Frank back into one of the stools at her counter. He goes, not resisting at all, eyes still trained on Karen’s every movement. The weight of him under her hands is almost more than she can take, and she has to stop touching him before she melts completely.
She takes out the alcohol and gauze, and Frank doesn’t even flinch when she presses it to his skin, though she knows it must burn. She bandages it and steps back, her resistance ebbing away the longer Frank looks at her like that. She can't look at him anymore. It's too much.
He's too much.
When Karen goes into the freezer to look for an ice pack, she has to stretch into the back for it and the necklace drops out from under her shirt. She doesn’t notice until she’s back in front of Frank. He doesn’t take the ice, reaching instead for the star.
His eyes lift to hers, a soft hope burning behind them. “You kept it?”
“I never took it off,” she admits, the words slipping out before she can stop them. She can almost feel the heat of Frank’s skin, he’s so close to her now.
“I missed you,” he whispers.
A sob escapes from Karen’s throat. She’s waited so long to hear him say that, and she wants to believe it. She wants him so badly it hurts.
She’s in his arms before she knows what’s happening. She can feel his heart thundering against hers and then the tears come in waves because he’s alive, he’s here, he’s with her, and he says he’s staying.
“Stay, stay, please stay,” she murmurs, over and over again against his neck, her tears salty on his skin. She can't let him go. She won't.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”