Callum pats the cushion between him and Grant, his expression calm but expectant.
“Come here,” he says gently, not quite a command but not a request either.
When I don’t move, his hand lingers in the air for a beat before falling back to his thigh.
He studies me for another long second, his jaw ticking once in quiet resignation, then he leans forward and reaches for the remote.
The TV goes silent with a single click.
“You don’t have to talk about anything, Noelle. But you also don’t have to deal with any of this alone either.”
My chest constricts, my breath catching as my eyes flick between the three of them. Something inside me tightens at that.
There’s worry written all over their faces in different shades.
Normally, this would be the moment I turn on my heel and retreat, duck back into the other room and shut th
e door behind me before they can coax more of the truth out of me. That’s what I’ve always done when compassion starts to feel like pressure, when kindness feels like a spotlight glaring down on everything I can’t admit.
But this time I don’t.
My legs stay rooted to the floor. The weight of the last twenty-four hours presses down on me.
It’s all justthere, heavy and relentless. And maybe that’s why I can’t make myself move. Maybe I’m just too tired to keep running with no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel.
Maybe I’m just…over carrying all of this by myself like I always do. Of pretending that the weight doesn’t crush me sometimes.
That I’m fine being both the shield and the soft place for my son to land.
That I don’t wake up most nights choking on all the things I can’t say out loud.
I swallow hard against the lump forming in my throat, blinking fast to keep the tears at bay. “Thank you…for earlier. For stepping in when you did. That…meant a lot to me.”
Grant’s the one who answers first. “You don’t need to thank us, Noelle. Neither of them have any right coming up to you like that. You shouldn’t have to thank anyone for being treated with respect.”
His dark blue eyes soften, the warmth in them cracking through his stoic facade.
His silver-threaded hair catches the light when he shifts again and for a moment, I’m back in that living room, his callused hands gentle against my skin, his gruff whispers turning my pleas into prayers.
I let out a shaky breath and stare down at my hands, tracing the seam of my sleeve with my thumb. “I know. But still…thank you.”
The words feel small, inadequate against the storm of emotions swirling within me.
It’s not just gratitude that I feel, it’s longing for things I can’t have.
From the weight of carrying these secrets that I’ve guarded for years to protect my dad and Eli. To protect them too from the fallout.
I look up again, meeting Grant’s eyes, then Callum’s, then Dean’s. Something shifts in the air, a spark igniting in the quiet.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper. “Being here, with you all…it’s too much.”
Callum lifts his hand again toward me. “You don’t have to think about it. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
But we all know that’s a lie.
I’m standing on the edge of something reckless, something I thought I’d left behind all those years ago.
But their closeness, their care even now when they have no obligation to show me any, pulls me under anyway.
