“Stop.” I cut him off with more force than I intended. My voice is a raw thing. “Stop making light of it. Stop telling me itwas nothing when it could have been everything.” My hands are on his shoulders now, shaking him gently but with a steadiness that scares me. “Do you understand me? I can’t—” My voice breaks, the words smaller now. “I cannot handle losing you because you won’t stop hurting yourself.”
He looks like someone punched him in the stomach. The admission lands between us like a new kind of truth. For a second, he is utterly silent, and in that silence I think I see him—really see him—the boy beneath the bravado, the small broken parts he hides with jokes and fights.
“I—” he starts, voice ragged. “Alaric, I—Jesus, I didn’t mean to scare you. I wasn’t thinking.” He swallows, looks at the floor, then back up. “I thought…maybe you’d be safer if you were with your life. With what your father gives you. I thought you’d be happier if you never had to fight for me.”
“You thought wrong,” I say, fiercer than I expected. “I would rather fight for you for the rest of my life than spend one hour without you because I listened to what my father thought was best. I can’t—” My chest tightens. Tears spill again because it’s too much and I’m tired of bottling it up. “I can’t live in a world where you disappear because you think you deserve to hurt.”
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, he is clear and present, sharp in a way that makes my heart stutter. “I’ll stop,” he says. The words are small, but the ring of truth under them makes something in me unclench. “I’ll stop drinking. I’ll…try.” There’s a plea in his voice I’ve never heard from him—the admission that he’s scared of the hole he falls into and that he needs someone to hold the edges.
The wordtryis a sliver of an offering, fragile and imperfect. But I see the tremor in his hands, the way he looks at me like he’s handing me something precious and fragile to guard.
“No more maybe,” I say, and the command is softer than I feel, but it lands solid. “I will be by your side. Every step. If youlet me, but you have to meet me. You have to let me help.” My voice is steady with something like resolve. I can feel my fear harden into anger at the idea of watching him self-destruct and doing nothing.
He nods, tiny, a man accepting balm. “I will do it,” he says. “I swear.” He wipes at his face with the back of his hand like he’s cleaning himself out of a dirty habit. “I’m so tired of fucking up. I’m tired.”
The honesty rips through me like wind. I reach for him again and this time there’s no hesitation on his part.
My voice is steady as a stone. “We’ll do this together. We’ll find someone to help you. You won’t have to fight alone.”
He folds himself into my chest, forehead against my collarbone, and there’s a tremble that runs through him like a current. I wrap my arms around him and let him be small in my embrace, let his weight settle like a fact I can hold.
He murmurs, voice muffled into fabric, “I will do it. For you.”
“Then start now,” I whisper. “No more walking into traffic. No more thinking you have to disappear. Promise.” My words are fierce and soft at the same time.
He squeezes my hand, then pulls my face toward his. He kisses me like an answer, like a vow folded into motion. It’s small, earnest, not perfect—but it’s real.
When he pulls away, his eyes are wet but clear. “I will,” he says again. “I promise.”
We stay until the tremor leaves his shoulders, until the hospital’s white light stops feeling like an accusation and starts to feel like a place that saved us both in a different way. Outside, the city hums with its old life. Inside, we stitch something fragile and new.
18
Magnus
The first thing I notice when we get to Alaric’s apartment is how quiet it is. No noise, no TV, just the hum of the fridge and the occasional buzz from his phone on the counter.
He sets my duffel bag down by the door like it’s something fragile. I still smell like the hospital—antiseptic, metal, sweat. I’m too exhausted to care.
“Sit,” he says gently, pointing to the couch.
I do. The cushions sink under me, swallowing me whole. I don’t realize how badly I’m shaking until he kneels in front of me, his hands warm around my knees. His tux is wrinkled, his hair a mess from running his fingers through it for the last hour. He looks like hell. Beautiful, worried hell.
“You need to hydrate,” he says. “You’ve got nothing left in your system.”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “Water sounds good.”
He gets up, fills a glass, and comes back with that no-nonsense look doctors must have when they’re trying to save apatient from himself. His phone buzzes again—loud against the countertop—but he ignores it.
I take the glass. The water’s cold enough to sting my throat going down. I drink until my stomach sloshes.
Alaric hovers nearby, pacing, restless energy radiating off him like static. He stops only to glance at me, eyes scanning my face like he’s checking for hidden injuries.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just a couple scrapes. Nothing serious.”
“You could’ve—” He cuts himself off and turns away, dragging a hand through his hair.
