If he continued speaking I didn’t know because I lost the battle and my eyes slid shut. Encased in his arms. The steady rhythm of his heart echoing through my body, exhaustion pulled me under.
“Hey,” he said softly, running the back of his knuckle down my face as I slowly blinked awake. “Can I show you something?”
My teeth sunk into my bottom lip as I hesitated. Then nodded. He leaned back just enough to reach into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thin notebook. The cover was a simple pale green. It held no judgment, just empty pages.
“I saw it when I was checking out,” he said. “It made me think of you. I’d seen a few lying around the house and in your room.”
He’d noticed them? My chest tightened with an emotion I couldn't name. “It’s stupid,” I bit out, defensively.
“No,” he said gently. “It’s not.” He held it out to me. Like an offering. “For when it gets too loud. When you feel like you have to do something just to feel real.”
My throat closed. A stray tear escaped when my eyes fluttered shut.
“I’m not trying to take anything from you,” he added quickly. “I just… thought this could be another place to put it that won’t hurt you.”
It.The ache. The need. The noise. The wanting that didn’t know where to go. I took the journal with shaking hands. The cover was cool. Solid. Real. It was bare like a clean slate. It felt like blanket permission.
“Write whatever you want,” he said. “You don’t have to show me. You don’t have to make it good. You don’t have to make it make sense.” He hesitated. “Just… let it exist somewhere that isn’t inside you.”
Sleepily, I nodded and tucked the journal against my chest as I felt the reassuring weight of him disappear. I couldn’t speak, but it didn’t feel like he expected a response. He reached out and rested his hand lightly on my head, running his fingers through my hair. The gentle touch grounded me.
“You don’t have to disappear to survive this,” he said softly. “Sleep well.” A gentle brush of lips pressed against my temple in a barely there kiss.
Something in me twisted around that sentence. It wasn’t comfort or relief. Hope was too big a word. But something adjacent. He left me alone after that—wrapped in my blanket, journal tucked against my chest—and headed downstairs. Like he was leaving a light on.
CHAPTER 12
ANTHONY
Ithought I understood the shape of Elliot's pain. That I knew the depths he plunged to when his depression swept him away to a darker place but clearly I was mistaken. It was impossible to scrub the sensation of his bloodied and broken skin off my finger tips. It was impossible to bleach the image of the ragged, weeping red lines of his skin from my mind.
I didn’t sleep that night. Even after hours of holding Elliot’s sleeping form in my arms. His body fit perfectly against mine. Too perfectly.
His back curved into my chest like it had learned the shape of me. One arm coiled around mine, light enough that I could have shifted him without waking, though I never would have. He weighed less than he used to. Not drastically. Just enough that my body noticed the absence before my mind did.
My hand rested at his waist, fingers spanning more space than they once had. Bones easier to trace. Breath fitting into mine without effort. Like he belonged there in a way that scared me.
Even though my body relaxed with his proximity. I couldn't switch my mind off.
Instead, I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling hours later, listening to the house breathe. The quiet had changed shape since I left Elliot asleep in his room. It wasn’t empty anymore. It was weighted. Like something fragile had been placed in the center of it, and everything else was holding on around it.
The refrigerator clicked on and off in the kitchen. Pipes sighed somewhere in the walls. The house settled around itself, wood contracting as the night cooled. Each sound repeated, familiar enough to mark time without announcing it.
Midnight passed. Then something close to morning. I kept seeing his face when I pulled his sleeve back. Not the blood stained gauze and broken skin as much as his eyes. That split-second where he realized I’d seen him.
Not shame—not exactly. Something more exposed than that. Like he’d been caught wanting something he wasn’t allowed. Not just wanting me, but wantingthroughme. Wanting something solid enough to keep him here.
That kind of wanting I’d seen before. The kind that didn’t stop at desire, that curled its fingers around need and squeezed until it hurt. I was afraid of how easily I could become that for him. Afraid I already was.
I’d told him he didn’t have to disappear to survive. I wasn’t sure I believed it yet. My chest felt too tight for sleep to come. Too full of things I hadn’t said. So eventually, quietly, I got up.
The hall light was off. The house was dim and blue from the faint moonlight. Elliot’s door was closed but not locked. I stood there longer than I should have, my hand hovering an inch from the handle.
I wasn’t there to check on him. At least that’s what I told myself. I just needed to check he was still breathing.
The door opened without a sound. He was exactly where I’d left him. Curled on his side. Hair fallen into his eyes. The journal tucked under his arm like it was something he was afraid hemight lose if he let go. The only difference was the pen that lay discarded on top of the sheet. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d been struggling to sleep.
My chest did something painful at the sight of him. I should have turned around. I didn’t. Instead I stepped in, and gently pulled the journal free from where he held it and slid it half open. He didn’t stir. His breathing stayed slow and even.
