“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t get it,” I snap, then immediately regret it. “It’s the only thing that shuts it off. The noise. The guilt. The—everything.”
There’s a long pause. “You called me instead,” he says finally. “That’s something.”
The simplicity of it hits me harder than the liquor. I close my eyes, letting his voice wash over me. He’s calm. Always calm. He could talk me off any ledge, and he doesn’t even know how close I am to jumping.
“I don’t want to ruin you,” I say. “I don’t want to ruin us.”
“There is no us,” he says gently.
I laugh again, shaking my head. “Liar.”
“Magnus—”
“No, listen,” I cut him off, leaning forward, elbows on my knees. “You can say whatever you want, but I know what I felt. I know what you felt. You can pretend it was a mistake, but I saw it in your eyes. You wanted it as much as I did.”
He exhales, a sound somewhere between frustration and surrender. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m honest,” I correct. “Maybe for once in my life.”
He doesn’t answer. I can hear the faint echo of his breath through the line, steady, grounding. It’s the only thing keeping me from unraveling completely.
“I can be quiet,” I say after a while. “I can stay in the dark, if that’s what you need. I don’t care about the headlines or the gossip or your perfect family. I just want you. I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”
“Magnus…”
“I mean it,” I insist, voice cracking. “You can keep me a secret. Just don’t shut me out.”
The silence stretches. For a moment, I think he’s hung up. Then, softly: “You don’t have to beg me to stay.”
“Feels like I do,” I whisper. “You keep walking away.”
“I’m not,” he says. “I’m just… trying to figure out how to do this without destroying us both.”
I drag a hand down my face, the stubble scraping my palm. “You make it sound like we’re some kind of tragedy.”
“Aren’t we?” he asks.
I don’t have an answer for that.
The world tilts again. I lie back on the couch, phone pressed to my ear, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The plaster’s cracked; I never noticed before. Funny what you start seeing when you’ve got nothing left to hide behind.
“Magnus,” he says, quieter now. “Listen to me.”
“Always do.”
“Put the bottle down,” he repeats.
I sigh. “You sound like Phoenix.”
“Maybe he’s right.”
“I doubt it.”
“Try,” he says.
For some reason, I do. I reach over, set the bottle on the table. My hand trembles. It feels like giving up, like surrendering something sacred. But when I do, the room stops spinning quite so hard.
