I can’t do this. Not here.
I stand, slow and careful, folding the blanket with the kind of care that deserves a thank you. Each fold is a prayer. A delay. My fingers tremble slightly, and I pretend it’s from the cold.
As I move, I feel his eyes on me, dragging across my spine, my shoulders, a question he doesn’t know how to ask.
The hallway yawns open, dim and creaking with old memories. I walk barefoot over worn wood, each step quiet but not weightless. The chill kisses the soles of my feet. Somewhere in the walls, the house exhales. Old. Familiar. Haunted.
I don’t expect to hear the footsteps behind me. Or maybe some part of me did. Because they don’t rush. They don’t call out. They just follow. Steady. Measured. Like he waited for the moment everything else fell away. My pulse picks up. Not fast. Not panicked. Just… aware.
I stop halfway up the stairs. Turn. He’s already there.
Two steps below. Hands buried in his pockets. Watching me, something sacred and sharp at once. The way his gaze holds mine, it’s not hunger. It’s reverence. Bracing himself for a truth he won’t be able to undo.
“You’re supposed to stay down there,” I murmur, my voice brittle, fraying at the edges. My throat closes around the last syllable. Too close. Too exposed.
His shoulders lift, then fall. The idea of ‘supposed to’ means less than nothing to him.
“You didn’t run,” he says. Not accusing. Just a quiet fact. “I thought maybe… you didn’t want to be alone.”
I should lie. I should armor up. Say the kiss meant nothing. That what I felt on the back of his bike was just adrenaline and confusion not this. Not whatever this is curling in my gut and burning behind my ribs. But the lie won’t form. Not tonight. My mouth moves, but nothing comes. Just silence thick enough to choke on.
But I’m so damn tired of lying. Especially to myself.
So I don’t say anything. Just turn and keep walking. His footsteps fall in behind mine, calm and quiet. Not chasing. Just there. Gravity. Inevitability. As though he’s been waiting for this silence to hold us both. The air shifts around us—warmer, heavier. The way it does before a summer storm breaks.
At his bedroom door, I pause. My fingers hover over the knob. The air thickens, heavy with what hasn’t been said. I glance back.
He’s leaned against the opposite wall now, arms crossed, gaze locked on mine, bracing for impact. There’s something haunted in his eyes. And something more dangerous. Hope.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
His voice is low. “Waiting to see if you’d shut the door in my face.”
My hand tightens around the knob. I could. And he’d let me. It’s his room, but he’d let me shut him out of it. The choice clings to me. So simple. So final.
Instead, I push it open. Step inside. I don’t check to see if he follows, but the click of the door closing behind me lands with the force of thunder.
The room is dim, lit only by the spill of streetlight slicing through the blinds. Shadows stretch long over the floor. There’s the dresser he cleared for me with drawers I still haven’t filled. The chair I never sit in. The bed that feels borrowed even when I sleep in it.
I sit on the edge, arms curling around my stomach. My breath shudders. My fingertips twitch. The silence drapes heavy over my shoulders, a second skin.
He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t fill the silence. Just takes the chair across from me, elbows on his knees, fingers loose, gaze steady.
It’s worse than if he touched me. Worse than if he left. He’s here. Seeing all of me. And not flinching. My ribs ache. The kind of ache that comes after crying, even when no tears fall.
I bite the inside of my cheek. Then it slips out, too raw to catch.
“I don’t know what to do with you.”
His answer is soft. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“But I kissed you back.” The admission cuts on the way out. “I felt something. And I don’t know if that makes me weak or stupid or—”
“Candace.” My name lands carrying the weight of a vow. “You’re not weak. Or stupid. You’re surviving. However you need to.”
I shake my head. “You make it so hard to hate you.” The truth cracks in my voice. A sliver of something too close to longing.
“I know.”
