“I’m trying,” I whisper.
His gaze flickers to my pocket like he can sense the ghost of a buzz there.“You don’t have to tell me who,” he adds, softer still.“But if someone is putting that look in your eyes—” His jaw works.“I don’t care if I’m the last person you want to call.Call me.I’ll answer.”
The floor tilts.Not with fear this time.With something like relief.
“I don’t want you to get in trouble,” I say.
“I’m not worried about me.”
“I am,” I say, and the honesty makes heat rise under my skin.“I’m worried about all of you.”
He flinches.“Why?”
“Because you keep throwing yourselves at a thing you can’t see yet.”
He studies me for a long time, trying to map the space between what I’m willing to say and what I can’t.He steps closer, then checks himself, stopping with inches to spare.It feels like a cliff edge for both of us.
“Wren,” he says, and my name in his mouth is too big for this hallway.“Tell me how not to make it worse.”
“Don’t fight Finn,” I say first, because that one is easiest.“Don’t fight anyone.Not for me.”
The muscle in his cheek jumps.“No promises.”
“Atlas.”
His eyes lift.I hold them.
“Please,” I add, and the word cracks down the middle.
He looks away, like the sound hurt.“Fine.I won’t fight him.”
“Or Kael.”
“Jesus,” he mutters, a ghost of a smile, shaking his head.“I’m not suicidal.”
“Or the players who say dumb things in the locker room,” I push, because the picture of him exploding at some rookie who jokes about the trainer he’s clearly protective of makes my stomach roll.
His mouth flattens.“They won’t.”
He says it like a threat to the air, and somehow that helps.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admit.“Any of it.”
“Me neither.”
We stand there with our failure between us and it feels, for the first time all morning, like something we’re surviving instead of something that’s going to swallow us whole.
“I’m sorry I looked at you the way I did yesterday,” he says quietly.“Like I was the problem.I hate that I put that in your body.I hate that you felt—” He breaks off, knuckles whitening where his fist should be.He unclenches them.“I hate it.”
“You didn’t,” I say.“You didn’t put it there.”
He searches my face, and I don’t look away.If he’s going to see anything, let it be the truth and not the shadow of it.
He nods once, accepting the answer without making me hand over the name it came from.
“Okay,” he whispers.“Okay.”
There’s a crack in his voice now that wasn’t there before.It makes me brave in tiny, foolish increments.
