His hand kept worrying at his sleeve. Rubbing at his forearm like the skin underneath it hurt. Not absently. Deliberately. Like he was trying to quiet something that wouldn’t stay quiet.
My stomach dropped. “Elliot…” My voice came out rougher than I meant it to.
His fingers stilled. Then he tugged the cuff of his hoodie down another inch. Just enough to hide whatever had been there. “I’m fine,” he said too quickly.
The lie sat between us, raw and bleeding and unacknowledged
My hands clenched at my sides like they were looking for something to hold. Or hit. Or fix. My chest hurt in a way I didn’t recognize. Sharp and nauseating, like I’d swallowed something that didn’t want to be inside me.
I had done this. Not with my hands—but with my absence.
“You came back,” he said faintly, looking out across the vast expanse of ocean.
There it was. Not relief. Not welcome. Just the quiet shock of someone who had already rehearsed being alone. It hurt more than anger would have.
“You didn’t have to,” he said. His fingers kept worrying at the sleeve of his hoodie, tugging it down over his wrist like hewas hiding something from the air. “You already proved you can leave.” The words were soft. The blade inside them wasn’t. “I figured that part out last night.”
That landed harder than anything he could have thrown at me. “Elliot?—”
“You don’t have to explain,” he cut in quickly. Too quickly. “You don’t owe me anything. I get it.”
His mouth curved into something that wasn’t a smile. It was what he wore when he was trying to make himself smaller than the pain.
“You’re good at leaving,” he added softly. “You make it look like kindness.”
“I was wrong.”
That made him look at me. Really look. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“It means I don’t get to decide what hurts you from a distance,” I said. “It means I don’t get to call abandonment protection just because it makes me feel less guilty.”
His throat bobbed. The tip of his tongue wet his lips as his eyes widened at my words.
“I don’t want to be the thing that breaks you,” I said.
His voice came out barely there. “Then don’t. Don’t say things you can’t stand behind. That’s worse.”
Not pleading. Not demanding. Just stating the rule of his survival.
The simplicity of it cracked something open in me. Fear flared—bright and fast—that I was about to become something I couldn’t step away from again. I stepped into him before I could overthink it. Not a grab. Not a pull. Just close enough that our space disappeared.
He froze. Not the stillness of relief. The stillness of impact. Like my nearness had hit a bruise he hadn’t known was still tender.
When I reached for him, his breath hitched—sharp, startled—and he flinched before he could stop himself. Not away. Not exactly. Just… braced. Like part of him was still waiting for the hurt to come.
That broke me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered instinctively, before I even knew what I was apologizing for.
His jaw tightened. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes. Then—slowly—he let himself step into me. His forehead pressed into my chest. His fingers clutched the back of my top like he was afraid I might evaporate. Like he knew people could vanish without warning.
His body was cold. Still. Too still.
I wrapped my arms around him slowly. Carefully. Like touching something already cracked. His breath shuddered once. Then again. But when I brushed my lips over the top of his head he finally melted into me.
A sound slipped out of him—not a sob, not a word—just the sound of someone finally setting something heavy down.
I closed my eyes and pressed my cheek into his hair. He smelled of salt and smoke and ocean and grief. “You don’t disappear,” I murmured. “Not on my watch.”
