“I’m not asking you to decide anything,” I add quickly. “Or explain yourself. I just… I don’t want silence to turn into distance.”
She sets the knife down gently, being careful not to make noise, and turns fully toward me.
“I was worried this was coming,” she admits softly.
My stomach drops. “Because you don’t?—”
“Because I don’t want to hurt you,” she says, cutting in. “Or lose what feels safe right now.”
That word again. Safe.
“I know,” I say. “That’s why I waited.”
Her eyes search my face. “You don’t sound angry.”
“I’m not,” I tell her. “I’m just… trying not to disappear.”
“I don’t have clarity yet,” she says. “I’m still sorting through what’s fear and what’s instinct. And I don’t trust myself to get it right all the time.”
“I don’t need right,” I say. “I just need real.”
She nods slowly. “I can do real.”
Relief moves through me, but before I can respond, we hear footsteps pounding back down the hallway.
“I got them!” Sadie announces triumphantly, skidding into the kitchen and nearly colliding with the counter. Glitter spills everywhere. “They were hiding.”
Delaney laughs, the tension dissolving, and crouches down to Sadie’s level. “Well, we can’t have that.”
I step back automatically, giving them space, watching the way Delaney listens as if Sadie’s entire world fits in her hands.
As I turn to leave the kitchen, Delaney’s voice stops me.
“Caleb?”
I glance back.
She meets my eyes. “Thank you for saying something.”
I nod once. “Anytime.”
It’s not clarity.
But it’s not nothing either.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Delaney
The number does not stop existing justbecause I pretend it does.
I make dinner. I clean up. I listen to Sadie explain a very complicated game involving invisible dragons and rules that change mid-sentence. I smile at Boone, laugh at something Silas says, nod along while Caleb talks about fence posts.
I do all the things that sayI’m fine.
I am very convincing.
I try not to think about the conversation I had with Caleb earlier. About the way he stood there, careful and solid, choosing every word with both hands. About how he told me he cared without asking me to carry it for him. About how that somehow made everything feel heavier instead of lighter.
